Religious pluralism is a plain fact of life. Its presence can also be a valuable indicator that a society in which it is found truly values freedom. It is even the contention of some philosophers that religious pluralism is not merely an empirical fact, but an epistemological necessity. But pluralism can also present grave difficulties in the public square. As philosopher Raymond Dennehy notes, “because liberal democracy is committed to allowing its members as much freedom of belief, speech, and action as is consistent with the public welfare, its greatest challenge is the reconciliation of pluralism with unity.”[1] Compounding that challenge is the idea of religious exclusivism, or, the counter-pluralist notion that one’s religion is true and all others in opposition to it are false.[2] The central question to be addressed in this paper, therefore, is how a Christian exclusivist can work together for the common good in a pluralist society in cooperation with persons of different faiths. The first part of the paper will offer a critique of the philosophical pluralism of John Hick and seek to establish the truth of the theistic worldview over and against all non-theisms and against pluralism. Building upon the theistic worldview, the second part will offer the viewpoint of the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain as a way for the Christian exclusivist, particularly one who considers his faith to be well-grounded and based upon universally-accessible principles of reason, to work together with others for the common good without compromising his religious convictions.
The fact of religious pluralism. At the dawn of the twentieth century, American pragmatist William James addressed the issue of religious diversity, asking: “Ought it to be assumed that in all men the mixture of religion with other elements should be identical? Ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religious elements? In other words, is the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds regrettable?” James’ singular response to his own questions was unequivocal: “To these questions I answer ‘No’ emphatically.”[3] One hundred years later, Americans have not departed in any appreciable manner from the pluralism celebrated by James, often boasting that ours is one of the most, if not the most religiously-diverse nation in the world. And the facts seem to bear witness. According to the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, among the non-Christians practicing their faith in America there are over one hundred forty thousand Baha’is, roughly three to four million Buddhists, just over one million Hindus, two hundred fifty thousand Sikhs, twenty-five thousand Jains, eighteen thousand Zoroastrians, six million each of Jews and Muslims, and up to one million Pagans. All told, the Project estimates that there are approximately seventeen million non-Christian Americans, or roughly six percent of the total population, safely and freely practicing their faith in the United States. And these figures do not include atheists or others who profess allegiance to no religion at all.[4]
Of the remaining population, the vast majority of Americans still at least loosely identify themselves with some form of Christianity. But even this large majority hardly amounts to anything even resembling a monolithic group. One handbook catalogs nearly one hundred Christian denominations, not to mention a myriad of sub-denominations including twenty-six Baptist, eight Brethren, ten Church of God, ten Lutheran, thirteen Mennonite, sixteen Methodist, eleven Pentecostal, nine Presbyterian, and multiplied more.[5] Even in the far more homogenous founding era, religious diversity was still a fact that had to be reckoned with when it came to hashing out a constitution for the new nation. Perhaps one of the greatest potential stumbling blocks to the ratification of the Constitution was the question of how a potent enough government could be formed without seriously threatening the diversity of religious belief among the people and the colonies. In sum, religious plurality in America is nothing new; it is as old as the country itself. Even the Christian who wishes to turn back the clock to a “more Christian” era will still find himself, just as the founding fathers were, faced with the problem of reconciling pluralism and unity.
The philosophy of religious pluralism. Religious pluralism, however, is more than just a cluster of sociological facts. It is the position of some philosophers that pluralism is the necessary outcome of the epistemological divide between mankind and “the Ultimate.” This divide is often illustrated on a popular level by the parable of the blind men and the elephant. In the familiar parable, an elephant is being examined by a number of blind men, each of whom feels a different part of the elephant and consequently draws different conclusions about the nature of the elephant. One grabs the trunk and concludes that it is a snake. Another grabs a tusk and concludes that it is a spear. Another grabs the tail and concludes that it is a rope. And so on. But none of the individual examiners grasps the whole picture. The blind men are said to represent the epistemic status of the world’s religions: all have a part of the truth; none has the truth. Such is the position of the influential philosopher John Hick. Dennis Okholm and Timothy Phillips, co-editors of Four Views of Salvation in a Pluralistic World, note in their introduction that very simply, “John Hick towers over all other pluralists in influence and renown.”[6] In 1996, then-Cardinal Ratzinger also specifically implicated Hick for the rising philosophical relativism[7] in which “Christianity is reduced to just another religion with no particular claim to uniqueness.” Furthermore, Ratzinger observed that behind this religious/philosophical pluralism “lies the influence of [Immanuel] Kant and the notion that we can ‘prove’ that we can have no contact with objective reality.” Thus, any discussion of religious pluralism must address the pluralist hypothesis of John Hick, as well as the Kantian foundation upon which it is constructed.
John Hick still self-identifies as a Christian but at the same time vigorously attacks the uniqueness of Christianity, claiming that it is really no more than one of the many phenomenological manifestations of the “ineffable Ultimate.” Hick’s overall rejection of exclusivism/absolutism in “fundamentalist” Christianity is founded upon three main premises: (1) the basically equal salvific value of all the “great religions” based upon their apparent equivalence in terms of moral efficacy; (2) a rejection of the uniqueness and divinity of Jesus Christ, and a call for a “Copernican Revolution” that would replace the “Ptolemaic” christocentrism with a more universally acceptable theocentrism; and (3) a Kantian epistemology that concludes that God is ultimately unknowable and no one religion can claim exclusive rights to truth and salvation. Only this third premise will be addressed in this paper.
Some background into Hick’s spiritual pilgrimage might help clarify his reasons for developing the pluralist hypothesis with its Kantian foundation. Hick recounts that even though Christendom began to realize in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it was part of a larger world of religions, it was not until after World War II that there was large scale contact between the Christendom of the West and the myriad of non-Christian religions of the East.[8] The resulting explosion of information about the other “great religions”[9] of the world, the more mobile society in which greater opportunities for foreign travel existed, and the massive immigration from East to West, all contributed to an awakening to the pluralist viewpoint.[10] What happened in light of these global changes was that Christians coming in contact with adherents to “strange” religions, many perhaps for the first time, realized that their Muslim or Jewish or Hindu neighbor was “in general no less kindly, honest, thoughtful for others, no less truthful, honourable, loving and compassionate, than are in general our Christian fellow citizens.”[11] Hick eventually concluded that all the world’s religions espoused a common moral outlook. Moreover, they also provided their adherents with roughly equal justifications for rejecting ego-centeredness and turning to God-centeredness, a turn that according to Hick is the substance of true salvation.
It was this phenomenon of “moral equivalence” that led Hick to reconsider his exclusivist, evangelical faith. Thus, in his words, “the pluralistic hypothesis is arrived at inductively, from ground level. I start out as one committed to the faith that Christian religious experience is not purely a projection but is at the same time a cognitive response to a transcendent reality; and its fruits in Christian lives confirm this to me.” But his contact with believers of other faiths challenged this naïveté: “I then notice that there are other great world religions likewise reporting their own different forms of religious experience, the cognitive character of which is supported in the same way. And so I have to extend to them the principle that religious experience constitutes a valid basis for religious belief.” His naïveté thus overcome, the newly emerging facts that confronted Hick still demanded a rational explanation: “I now have on my hands the problem of several conflicting sets of truth-claims which are equally well based in religious experience and confirmed by their fruits.” And herein lies Hick’s rationale for the Kantian-based hypothesis: “In order to understand this situation I form the hypothesis of an ultimate divine reality which is being differently conceived, and therefore differently experienced, from within the different religio-cultural ways of being human.”[12] The distinction between the “ultimate divine reality” in-itself, and the different ways that it is perceived, comes from the Kantian epistemological distinction between the noumena (thing-in-itself) and the phenomena (thing-as-it-appears-to-me):
We therefore have to distinguish, as Immanuel Kant did, between a thing as it is in itself and that thing as humanly perceived – that is, as phenomenon. . . . If, then, we distinguish between the Real/ Ultimate/ Divine in itself and that Reality as humanly perceived, recognizing that there is a range of modes of human cognition, we can at once see how there is a plurality of religious traditions constituting different, but apparently more or less equally salvific, human responses to the Ultimate. These are the great world faiths.[13]
Thus, the “great world faiths,” are simply manifestations of God, not as He really is but as He is perceived by the human mind: “In developing this pluralist point of view, I am assuming that religion is our human response to a transcendent reality, the reality that we call God. And as a human response there is always an inescapably human element within it.”[14] These manifestations, or phenomena, owe their very existence to the fact that God is unknowable. No one knows who God really is because “we cannot directly experience the Real as it is in itself but only the varying phenomenal manifestations of it . . . [which] comes to human consciousness in the varying ways formed by the varying cultures of the earth.”[15] It should not surprise us, therefore, to find a tremendous variety in the phenomenological expressions of religion. In fact, Hick confidently asserts that “if we think we know what God is, then what we are thinking of is not God!”[16] Some experience the Real as personal, others impersonal; some as one, others as many; some as active, some passive; some as Jesus, others as Allah, and so on. But in the long run, “we cannot apply to the noumenal Real any of the distinctions with which we structure our phenomenal, including our religious experience.”[17]
A critique of philosophical pluralism. Hick’s reliance upon Kant is neither particularly novel nor surprising. John Trapani Jr. notes how even the well-traveled parable of the blind men and the elephant is “thoroughly Kantian: the elephant, as a ding an sich unknowable in itself, is perceived by each of the blind men differently according to the experience of the various parts or aspects of the animal experienced.”[18] In order to navigate through this critique of pluralism, it is therefore necessary to first address the epistemological question, though admittedly in a superficial manner. Since the heyday of Greek philosophy, rationalism and empiricism have always been the two dominant schools of thought in epistemology. In general, rationalism, in which it is thought that knowledge begins with the mind, has followed a line from Plato to Augustine to Descartes to Spinoza to Leibniz. Similarly, empiricism, in which it is believed that knowledge begins in the senses, has followed Aristotle to Aquinas to Locke to Berkeley to Hume. It was David Hume’s radical empiricism that awoke the rationalist Kant “out of his dogmatic slumbers” and compelled him to seek a synthesis of these two perennial adversaries. Kant’s solution was that while the senses indeed provided the content of knowledge, it was the mind, with its categorical structure, that formed the empirical data. Professor Stuart Hackett, late Chairman of the department of philosophy at Louisiana College, notes how to Kant “knowledge would be impossible on either a purely rational or a purely empirical basis.”[19] Rather, every act of knowledge presupposes both a categorical structure of the mind and experienced data: “There is, then, Kant clearly maintains, both a rational and an empirical facet to the production of knowledge: while all knowledge, as consisting of ideas in consciousness, must come from experience, experience itself is possible only because the mind comes to the world with certain pure conceptions of the understanding in terms of which the world is intelligible.”[20]
But while Kant’s synthesis of empiricism and rationalism was indeed an historically-significant stroke of brilliance, its collateral damage was equally severe. As Hackett writes: “The lasting contribution of Kant . . . was that he discerned the element of truth in both these positions. He saw that, although the empiricists were right in maintaining that the mind has no content of knowledge at birth, no innate ideas as such, they were all wrong in failing to cede to the rationalists that the mind does come to experience, not as a wax tablet, but with a rational structure in terms of which the world must be understood.”[21] The problem, however, was that Kant’s synthesis led him to the agnostic conclusion that, because knowledge occurs only after the mind forms the stuff of sense experience, the mind knows only the phenomena (thing-as-it-appears-to-me) and not the noumena (thing-in-itself). Hackett, who identifies himself as a rational empiricist in the Kantian tradition, nevertheless strongly critiqued this agnostic element of the phenomena/noumena distinction. The categories of the mind are said to give us no knowledge of the noumena, but “these noumena are asserted to exist as the origin or cause for the raw materials of sensation. But in thus admitting the existence of noumenal reality, I have already admitted that the application of the categories effects some knowledge of things-in-themselves – which is contrary to the hypothesis.”[22] Moreover, “It turns out that the very statement that the categories cannot give us a knowledge of the existence of noumenal reality suggests its own falsity. If there were no noumenal reality, and if I therefore had no knowledge of it whatever, it would never occur to me to deny the possibility of knowing such a reality. It follows that the contention is false that the categories yield no knowledge of the existence of noumena.”[23] In other words, Kant claimed that we know that there is a “thing-in-itself” but also claimed that we could not know anything about that thing as it is in itself. But it seems highly questionable to say that we know that something exists without also admitting to knowing something about that thing, however incomplete that knowledge may be. Simply put, pure “that-ness” cannot be known.[24]
Analogy, the Via Negativa and the God of Classical Theism. In fairness to Hick, he too recognized the seemingly insurmountable problem of Kant’s noumenal/phenomenal distinction and sought a way around it by positing a critical realism in which causation is on the human end, in the phenomena, not within the noumenal realm. But while this may be at least a partial answer to one critique of Kant, it still does not justify the reasoning given for the bifurcation in the first place. As Trapani points out, this Kantian assumption that Hick relies upon presumes that “reality is not intelligible in itself. Rather its intelligibility is a function of the limits of human knowledge.”[25] The Thomist answer, on the other hand, would argue that “the universe is intelligible in itself because of its causal dependence upon a Supreme Being who is intelligence itself.”[26] In contrast to the Kantian position, for the Thomist, “the sensible dimension of reality is only one dimension; the intelligible dimension of the universe, inherent in the universe itself, is the other. The intelligibility of the universe is not a function of human intellectual construction alone but rather a function of our unique human nature which is also different than the Kantian understanding of it.”[27]
In addition to the intelligibility of the universe, another concept heavily employed in Thomistic philosophy is the principle of analogy, an important way by which substantive knowledge of God is made possible. Significantly, Hick considered analogy to be useless as far as helping the intellect apprehend any knowledge of God: “For although we know, according to Aquinas, that God possesses the divine analogues of human goodness, wisdom, etc, we do not have the faintest idea what these divine analogues are. Although we know what it is for a human to be good and wise, we have no conception of what it is for God to be analogically good or analogically wise.”[28] Therefore, “such attributes as goodness, wisdom, and love are constructs which arise at the human level as a result of the divine impact upon us, but are not reflections on the human scale of the same attributes in God.”[29]
It is therefore important, especially if it is true that the universe is intelligible in itself owing to a causal dependence upon God, to investigate whether Hick or Aquinas is right concerning the prospect of us acquiring objective knowledge of God. If Hick is right that God is the “ineffable Real,” then we need not attempt to resolve apparent contradictions in the different conceptions of the Ultimate, since principles of logic, like the law of non-contradiction, would not apply to the realm of the ineffable. If Hick is right, in other words, pantheism, polytheism, panentheism, and theism, while logical contradictions to Aquinas, would be nothing more than epistemologically equivalent phenomenological expressions of the ineffable Real; things to celebrate, not dispute. From a philosophical perspective, the idea that the universe is intelligible because of its causal dependence upon God is a product of the cosmological argument. While many forms of this proof abound, a standard argument might look something like this:
(1) Something undeniably exists; I cannot deny my own existence
(2) My existence is either impossible, possible (contingent), or necessary
(3) Since my existence is contingent, I am therefore currently caused to exist by another.
(4) There cannot be an infinite regress of current causes[30] of existence
(5) Hence, there must be an uncaused first Cause.
Much ink has been spilt defending and critiquing this argument, as well as the many related theistic proofs, and this paper will not attempt to venture too far into that field. Suffice it to say that while the cosmological argument has had its notable detractors throughout history, it is, nevertheless, still defended today by many capable philosophers.[31] The task here, however, is not to defend the argument but to ask: Even if it is valid, does it tell us anything about God other than His pure that-ness? In other words, as philosophers George Klubertanz and Maurice Holloway question: “Can the human [mind] know what this first cause of being is? Or can the mind of man simply arrive at the bare and unqualified fact that there is such a cause and no more?”[32] In an article published in 1960, John Hick wrote: “From God’s Aseity, or ontic independence, his eternity, indestructibility, and incorruptibility can be seen to follow.” That is, as the self-existent, uncaused first Cause,[33] God must, among other things, be eternal, immutable, and simple (without parts). By the time that he had constructed his pluralist hypothesis, however, Hick had come to a far more agnostic view of God. Natural theology proponent Etienne Gilson in one sense agrees with Hick that God is beyond definition: “Now in the case of God all definition is impossible. He can be named; but to give Him a name is not to define Him. It order to define Him we should have to assign Him a genus. Since God is called Qui est,[34] He has no genus, because, if He had a genus, He would have an essence distinct from His act of being.”[35] But God’s essence is to exist. His essence and existence are one. Therefore, He could not have an essence distinct from His act of being, which would be required in order to define Him. Even Aquinas conceded:
Our natural knowledge takes its beginning from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God, because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen.
Though that may sound quite similar to Hick’s “ineffable Real,” Aquinas did not stop there:
But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God whether He exists, and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him. Hence we know of His relationship with creatures that He is the cause of them all; also that creatures differ from Him, since He is not in any way part of what is caused by Him; and that creatures are not removed from Him by reason of any defect on His part, but because He superexceeds them all.[36]
So even though God’s essence is beyond positive definition, we are not left, despite Kant and counter to Hick, in complete or near complete agnosticism concerning His nature. Indeed, as George Klubertanz and Maurice Holloway point out, if the proposition “God exists” told us nothing about the subject God other than mere existence, than we “would have no way of distinguishing the existence of God from the existence of any other being.”[37] Rather, assuming the validity of the cosmological argument that terminates with the existence of the uncaused first Cause, we can deduce from that substantive knowledge of God, however imperfect and incomplete, based upon (1) the via negativa and (2) the doctrine of analogy. The via negativa, or “way of negation,” as Gilson explains, is very simply to make God known, not by how He is, but how He is not.[38] The via negativa is a derivative of the principle of causality, that all effects share a likeness to their cause. Analogy “is the proportion or likeness between two (or more things).”[39] All things that exist share a likeness to God in their existence. But, assuming the validity of the cosmological argument, God, as uncaused, has no limitations whatsoever in His Being. His effects, however, are limited by their very nature as caused things. Unlike God Himself, caused beings do not contain within themselves the reason for their existence – they had to be caused to exist. God, on the other hand, is self-existing and uncaused. His nature is to be. Thus, He is entirely without limitation in His Being.
Let us briefly consider an example of how we can thus attain knowledge of the nature of God. Now we can say that a thing, say, man is “good.” That is, we can predicate of man the attribute of goodness. We can also predicate of God the same attribute of “goodness.” When we use the term “goodness” and predicate it of both man and God, we are using the term “goodness” in a univocal manner.[40] In other words, we mean the same exact thing by the term “goodness” whether we are predicating it of man or of God. However, we see that in man “goodness” is an accident and limited. But God is unlimited (infinite). Thus, when predicating the term to God, we deny something about God, by way of negation, namely that in Him there are any of the limitations of “goodness” that are found in His effects. Thus, man is good, but in a limited sense. God, as infinite Being, is goodness in an unlimited sense. More precisely, whereas man has goodness; God is goodness. Another way of saying that God is infinitely good is to say that He is omnibenevolent. Though space prohibits us from doing so, we could take any other number of attributes found in effects and predicate them, by way of negation, to their ultimate Cause. The Thomist, therefore, believes he has sound reasons, starting with actually undeniable existence (the “I exist,” or premise one, of the cosmological argument and not mere logical or rational necessities), to reason to not only the existence of God, but to many of the attributes associated with classical theism, like divine simplicity, perfection, omnisapience, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, immutability, et cetera.
The important thing to keep in mind is that while a Thomist would agree with Hick in some sense that “the intellect can have no knowledge whatever of what God is in himself,”[41] he means something very different by that notion than does the pluralist. Man knows by way of apprehending the essences of things. And it is true that man, as a finite being, cannot have knowledge of the infinite essence of God in itself. But far from leaving man in a Kantian-type agnosticism that would justify affirming contradictory notions of God as does religious pluralism, the Thomist understands that man has indirect yet substantive knowledge of God as known through his effects. Moreover, the Thomistic view of knowledge of God through His effects is not the same as the pluralist/Kantian view of knowledge of God through phenomenological manifestations. Recall from above that a major premise in Hick’s pluralism is that “we cannot apply to the noumenal Real any of the distinctions with which we structure our phenomenal, including our religious experience.”[42] But for the Thomist, even though knowledge of God is necessarily indirect and incomplete, the knowledge it yields is also necessarily the case and contradictions to that knowledge must be false. For example, as uncaused, God must be infinite. Therefore, any notion of Him as finite must be false. Another example: God, as infinite, must be One; there cannot be more than one infinite Being. Therefore, any notion of God as multiple in Being must be false.[43] Thus polytheism, if the cosmological argument is sound, must be false. Finally, though this will have to be asserted without appropriate justification, the cosmological argument necessarily entails that the Divine Essence be personal. And not just personal to me, but personal in itself.[44] It follows, then, that any worldview or religion premised on the notion of the “ineffable Real” as an impersonal force is necessarily false.
Pluralism fails and cannot provide the philosophical basis for democratic cooperation. Many more affirmations (or negations) can similarly be attributed to the Divine Nature using the via negativa and the doctrine of analogy. The upshot, assuming the validity of the cosmological argument, is a natural theology that delivers substantial knowledge about the nature of reality, both Divine and earthly. And very important to how the Christian addresses religious truth in the public square, Thomistic natural theology is done without reference to any sectarian principles, inspired texts, or mere appeals to authority. Nevertheless, its deliverances are profound. Mortimer Adler is certainly right when he observes the force of logic when applied to worldviews. Logically speaking, the universe might be eternal, or the universe might have had a beginning, but one must be false and the other true. No tertian quid exists. It might be the case that God exists, or it might be the case that God does not exist. But one or the other must be the case. It might be that one God exists, or it might be that many gods exist, but both cannot be true at the same time and in the same way.[45] The cosmological argument, so it seems, provides definite answers to these contraries and contradictories. But in any case, what seems certain is that we are not left in agnosticism: we can adjudicate between opposing worldviews; we can have some knowledge of God, knowledge that though it has religious implications, is not derived from any direct appeal to a religious tradition. In sum, Hick’s contention that “if we think we know what God is, then what we are thinking of is not God,”[46] is simply false. How could he possibly know a priori that what a person thought about God could not be an accurate apprehension[47] of God unless Hick himself knows who God is? But if Hick knows who God is, then his hypothesis is false. On the other hand, if Hick does not know who God is, then his hypothesis is still false: how could he know that classical theism was untrue? So if Hick’s view is true, then it is false. The fundamental premise of his pluralist hypothesis is self-referentially incoherent and his exasperation at the alleged uselessness of the doctrine of analogy is unfounded. The fact is, we do seem to have knowledge of God. What we do with that knowledge in the public square is the subject to which we now turn.
The Christian who rejects the pluralist hypothesis and holds to an exclusivist view of his religion must still decide in what manner he is to participate in the public square of a democratic and pluralist regime, if he is to participate at all. It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that at the very least, the Christian has good reasons for believing that the basic worldview upon which his religion is based (theism) is solid and rational. And if theism is true, then all non-theisms are false. And if all non-theisms are false, then every religion based upon a non-theistic worldview, while it may indeed contain many truths, must be false in its basic outlook on the world. In sum, the problem for the exclusivist, whether a Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim, is the problem of making absolute claims in a pluralist society. John Hick has written concerning this very problem, rightly observing how the sense of “special status” that comes along with believing that one’s religion is objectively and universally true has “been manipulated to motivate policies of persecution, coercion, repression, conquest and exploitation, or a sense that others cannot be left to follow their own faith or insight but must be converted to one’s own gospel.”[48] It was Hick’s contention that in the face of such imperialism, “religious pluralism can lead to creative doctrinal development.”[49] But at least three problems with this are immediately evident. First, Hick’s religious pluralism, specifically the third premise of his hypothesis that was critiqued above, is subject to seemingly insurmountable philosophical difficulties. Second, it is not all that clear that philosophical pluralism does anything to advance or cultivate dialogue among faiths and may even impede it.[50] Finally, it is very likely the case that most Christians committed to the exclusivity of their faith, even if they are aware of the idea of religious pluralism but cannot offer a sound rebuttal, are simply not going to abandon their exclusivism. It therefore remains to provide a constructive way for exclusivist Christians to positively contribute to the pluralist, democratic order without attempting to eliminate that pluralism, or worse, foster the kind of oppression which history has witnessed and of which Hick has reminded us.
The Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain, though by no means alone, is a worthy guide for exclusivist Christians at this point, even for evangelicals and other non-Catholics.[51] Maritain believed that theism was the true worldview and that Christianity was the true religion. And he believed that there was publicly accessible evidence to support those claims. But in spite of his absolute claims, Maritain was just as thoroughly committed to pluralism in society, and he viewed pluralism as a good, not just a necessary evil. In fact, of several principles he considered prerequisite to a free society, one was that it be pluralist, and another that it be theist.[52] Maritain is, therefore, an important thinker even for us today in that he openly advocated for diversity and tolerance, not in the absence of truth about God, but because of the public availability of the truth about God. Thus, keeping in mind that (1) Maritain was an apologist for the Christian faith, believing classical theism and the historic doctrines of Christianity to be objectively and demonstrably true; (2) that Maritain believed that theism and Christianity were the only legitimate rationales for democracy in the first place; and yet (3) that Maritain believed that religious and/or philosophical coercion was morally wrong and inconsistent with the principles of democracy, the following question emerges: How is the one committed to the objective and demonstrable truth of his religion able to maintain his philosophical and religious convictions and at the same time, without compromising those convictions, work for practical agreement in public policy with those of different or even opposing creeds? Maritain’s proposed answer was based upon two foundational principles: (1) the paradox of rational justifications; and (2) the analogical justification of practical agreement.
The paradox of rational justification. Maritain believed human equality was justified only by natural law and the Christian revelation, what he called, “the humanism of the Incarnation.”[53] But even granting that all humans are bound together by virtue of a common nature, “that sameness of nature is not sufficient to insure community of action, since we act as thinking beings and not simply by natural instinct.”[54] Common human nature in no way entails common ideology. As Maritain explained, “the present state of intellectual division among men does not permit agreement on a common speculative ideology, nor on common explanatory principles.”[55] Any attempt to foster agreement to a common ideology “would run the risk of imposing arbitrary dogmatism or of being stopped short by irreconcilable differences.”[56] Herein lies the great paradox: while rational justifications for the democratic order are indispensable,they are at the same time powerless to create agreement among men.
Rational justifications for the democratic order are indispensable because of the very nature of man as a rational animal. Another way of putting it is that men do not (1) accept the Idea of democracy in the first place nor (2) accept the outcomes of practical agreements within the democratic process without somehow finding a way to rationally justify that Idea or those agreements by virtue of their own theoretical conceptions. For instance, as it concerns democratic principles, men only accept those principles because they believe they are true. Maritain openly admitted that for him, the only true justification for democracy was to be found in the Christian religion. Indeed, “the more the body politic – that is, the people – were imbued with Christian convictions and aware of the religious faith which inspires it, the more deeply it would adhere to the secular faith in the democratic charter.”[57] But although he was convinced that democracy “has taken shape in human history as a result of the Gospel inspiration awakening the ‘naturally Christian’ potentialities of common secular consciousness,” at the same time, those who did not adhere to the Christian faith were still free to “found their democratic beliefs on grounds different from those more generally accepted.”[58] Either way, rational justifications are indispensable. At least a majority of the participants in the system of shared political power known as democracy must somehow be convinced in their own particular ways of the rightness of the democratic order or it cannot long subsist. By nature, men will only accede to what they at least believe to be true. At the same time, however, men of different creeds find their rational justification for democratic principles in apparently conflicting theoretical systems. Somehow, the Buddhist, the Muslim, the atheist, and the Christian, though radically opposed conceptually, are able to come together in the public square for the sake of the common good. But they are obviously not doing so by any worldview agreement. Therefore, within a pluralist society such as the United States, rational justifications for both the Idea of democracy and the outcomes of the democratic process are as powerless as they are indispensable. What is required instead is practical agreement based upon the principle of analogy.
The analogical justification of practical agreement. Genuine democracy cannot impose upon its citizens a demand for any philosophic or religious creed.[59] Therefore, the object of the secular faith in democracy is practical, not theoretical or dogmatic.[60] And men of different creeds can, for quite different reasons, share a reverence for “truth and intelligence, human dignity, freedom, brotherly love, and the absolute value of moral good.”[61] For a democracy to function properly, however, certain truths must be embraced such as “the existence of God, the sanctity of truth, the value and necessity of good will, the dignity of the person, the spirituality and immortality of the soul.”[62] But while speculative ideology and explanatory principles are often mutually exclusive, a common secular or civic faith is found “by virtue of an analogical similitude in practical principles, toward the same practical conclusions.”[63] That is, the various ideological principles and doctrines share, in a technical sense, an analogical relation to one another that is manifested in practical thought. The doctrine of analogy is a complex issue, but for the current purpose it is sufficient to use the same definition that was used above concerning the knowledge of God derivable from the cosmological argument: an analogy is “a proportion or likeness of one thing to another.”[64] The “analogates” are those things that are being compared, and the “principle analogate” is that analogate which most perfectly possesses the analogous perfection.[65]Maritain’s “primary analogate,” that worldview which most perfectly possessed the analogous perfection, was his own conviction “that a complete doctrine, based on all principles of Catholic teachings, is alone capable of supplying an entirely true solution for the problems of civilization.[66] The “secondary analogates” would include all other worldviews.[67]
Any number of social issues can be considered in light of this principle. Take for example, the case of abortion. It seems evident that in the whole, Christians are the ones who are the most committed to the pro-life position. Obviously, some Christians are committed to the pro-choice position or apathetic about the issue altogether. Likewise, many non-Christians are pro-life. So this issue, like all social issues, is not one in which all the Christians are on one side and all the non-Christians on the other. But overall, it is Christians who comprise the heart and soul of the pro-life movement. But because of the complexity of alliances involved, one problem that often arises for the Christian involved in pro-life activity, particularly for the Christian exclusivist, is how, or if, she is to work with non-Christians in seeking to advance the pro-life cause.[68] For example, consider the so-called “life chains” in which pro-life advocates line the streets en masse with placards seeking to communicate to the public the fundamental message of the pro-life position. The Christian exclusivist might be conflicted over whether it is right for her to stand side by side in this cause with, for example, a pantheist. The conflict that the Christian in this case finds herself in is that on the one hand, she believes in the practical good of ending or at least reducing the incidence of abortion and she knows that it takes significant numbers of fellow citizens to help advance the cause. Therefore, she does not want to diminish the size of the constituency that is side by side with her in her cause by demanding that they all share an exact identity in doctrine. On the other hand, she may be concerned that others, whether some fellow Christians or even non-Christians, will confuse her solidarity with the pantheist on the pro-life issue with an agreement with the pantheist on theological issues. Or, she might be concerned that others will view her solidarity with the pantheist in the pro-life movement as a compromise of her theological convictions and a move toward a more social gospel.
While the above illustration is anecdotal, it is undoubtedly one with which many pro-life Christians can relate. It should be noted at the outset, however, that quite obviously it is not the case that all Christians are morally superior to their non-Christian neighbors. Many noble causes, in fact, have been undertaken by Christians in rather ignoble ways. It is also equally evident that Christians are sometimes the weakest voice in public square when it comes to some other issues of social justice and the public good. Hick is certainly right when he observes that often times the non-Christian demonstrates an equal or greater morality than the Christian. But tragic as that may be, it is also beside the point. If we consider Maritain’s principle of practical agreement, we are simply saying that the Christian, if she is consistent with the principles of her faith, at least in theory should be able to provide the “primary analogate” when it comes to justifying the practical good of the pro-life position. The pantheist may also have a stake in the pro-life movement, and the Christian can certainly agree with him on the practical outcome. It may even be that the pantheist has better ideas and solutions for solving the practical problems. But the pantheist can only rationally justify his concern analogically, for his justification, if consistent with his non-theistic worldview, is not anchored in the actual nature of things. In other words, if the first Cause argument is valid, and if the knowledge yielded by natural theology is demonstrably true,[69] then the pantheist is simply wrong that God is the world and the world is God. But that does not mean that the pantheist cannot have good reasons for protecting the unborn. It simply means he can only rationally justify his reasons analogically, for his reasons can find no rational support in his worldview if in fact his worldview is false. In contrast, the theist, again assuming the validity of the cosmological argument, should be able to justify her pro-life position univocally, for that position, theoretically at least, seems to have a one-to-one relationship to her ultimate philosophical commitments, namely, the intrinsic value of man as the image of God.
What about natural law? But is it really necessary to critique religious pluralism in order establish a way for Christians and non-Christians to work together in the public square? Could it be the case that both pluralism and theism are consistent with the natural law position? Consider again two fundamental aspects of John Hick’s pluralism: (1) the alleged moral equivalence of the world’s great religions and (2) the fact that human beings are aware of the Real (noumena) by way of their experience with it (phenomena). It seems that Hick’s view might be compatible with the traditional natural law view, which would call into question the transition from the critique of Hick to the establishment of Maritain. But in order for Hick to argue that the world’s great religions are morally equivalent, he must posit a moral standard not intrinsic to one of those religions. Otherwise he would be judging one religion by the standards of another, which is clearly inimical to his hypothesis. But if the moral standard is not intrinsic to the phenomenal realm of the world’s religions, then it must come from the “noumenal” realm of the ineffable Real. But to locate the universal moral standard in the noumena runs counter to Hick’s thesis that this realm is unknowable. At the very least one would have to know that the noumena was unchanging, for otherwise how could the moral standard by which to ascertain the alleged equality of the world’s religions be a true standard? Moreover, as C. S. Lewis observed, the Source of the moral law would have to have characteristics more akin to a mind than to matter.[70] That is, it seems that if there is such a thing as natural law, then it is likely that its source must be a Person. Unlike the law of gravity that tells us what stones do, the moral law tells us what human beings ought to do, but often do not.[71] Or, to put it another way, the moral law carries with it the force of an imperative. The force of the imperative can seem impersonal, but the Source of the imperative is a Person.[72] But if that is true, then one would have to predicate personhood of the noumena, which would once again run counter to Hick’s thesis. The irony of the matter is that in the view of at least one prominent critic of Hick, the pluralist theory of moral equivalence among the world’s religions would be better explained by natural law.[73] But at the same time, pluralists generally deny any universally binding moral law because it requires an absolute Moral Law Giver.[74]
A democratic society has to make room for true diversity, lest the freedom it advertises be looked upon as a mere mirage. Likewise, the Christian who holds to the exclusivity of his faith does well to also acknowledge the irreversible religious heterogeneity of today’s society. But while a democratic society today cannot hope to be unified in philosophical outlook, neither can the core principles it cherishes exist in a metaphysical vacuum. Thus, what must continue to be contemplated, even in a pluralist society, is the real possibility that natural theology yields knowledge about the nature of God as well as the nature of all reality. If the existence and nature of God is indeed publicly accessible, and not merely a matter of private opinion or sectarian faith, then that reality has to be considered, regardless of the potential difficulties, as a more appropriate grounds for dialogue and practical agreement than the type of philosophical pluralism represented by the blind men and the elephant. Though Maritain’s principle of analogy is not a panacea, it is still worthy of consideration even today to the end that Christian exclusivists might draw some helpful insights into how they might positively contribute to the practical good within a pluralist society without compromising what they know to be true.
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[1] Raymond Dennehy, “Can Jacques Maritain Save Liberal Democracy from Itself?” In Truth Matters: Essays in Honor of Jacques Maritain, ed., John G. Trapani, Jr. (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 258-59.
[2] Exclusivism in this paper will not deal with the soteriological issue. One can theoretically be an epistemological exclusivist, but also be a soteriological inclusivist or universalist. Exclusivism in this paper will exclusively refer to the epistemological issue, that one believes that her religion is demonstrably true, and all others, insofar as they depart from that truth, are false.
[3] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Longmans, Green and Co, 1902), 485-501.
[4] Available at http://www.pluralism.org/resources/statistics/index.php. Accessed November 16, 2005.
[5] See generally, Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States, eight edition, revised by Samuel S. Hill (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1987).
[6] Dennis L. Okholm and Timothy R. Phillips, Four Views of Salvation in a Pluralistic World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 13.
[7] Philosophical and religious pluralism will be used interchangeably in this paper.
[8] John Hick, A Christian Theology of Religions: The Rainbow of Faiths (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 12.
[9] When Hick speaks of the “great religions,” he typically has in mind Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. He consciously leaves others out, such as Humanism, Marxism, and primal religions, not because he considers them insignificant, but because of the greater length of tradition associated with the former religions. See Hick, Christian Theology, 11-12.
[10] Ibid., 12-13.
[11] Ibid., 13.
[12] Ibid., 49-50.
[13] John Hick, “A Pluralist View,” in Okholm and Phillips, 47. Emphasis added.
[14] John Hick, “Is Christianity the only true religion, or one among others.” Available at http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article2.shtml. Last accessed November 20, 2005.
[15] John Hick, “A note on critical realism.” Available at http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article4.shtml. Last accessed November 20, 2005.
[16] John Hick, “A Pluralist View,” 48.
[17] John Hick, “The Real and Its Personae and Impersonae.” Available at http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article10.shtml. Last accessed November 20, 2005.
[18] John G Trapani Jr., “The Blind Men & the Elephant: Understanding the Secret to Epistemological Realism,” In Trapani, 7.
[19] Stuart C. Hackett, The Resurrection of Theism: Prolegomena to Christian Apology (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1957), 37.
[20] Ibid., 40.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 54.
[23] Ibid., 54-55.
[24] Even some unusual creature which one had never seen before could not be said to exist unless it had some characteristics that one could recognize such as it size, color, or its movements See Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1976), 22.
[25] Trapani, 7.
[26] Ibid., 8.
[27] Ibid. A Thomistic synthesis of empiricism and rationalism is that while knowledge always begins in the senses, the mind has the ability to abstract the immaterial forms from sensible things so that the thing sensed, in an analogical way, comes to exist in the mind. Thus, for the Thomist, the mind does not form the stuff of experience, but apprehends it. Knowledge is when the knower and the known become one.
[28] John Hick, “Who or What is God?” Available at http://www.johnhick.org.uk/article1.shtml. Last Accessed November 20, 2005.
[29] Hick, “Who or What is God?”
[30] All throughout this paper, any reference to “cause” should be understood in the sense of “efficient causality.”
[31] In addition to Hackett 194-203, see also, Norman L. Geisler, Philosophy of Religion (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1977), 87-226; J. P. Moreland, Scaling the Secular City (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 15-42; William Lane Craig, The Kalam Cosmological Argument (New York: Macmillan, 1979); and George P. Klubertanz and Maurice R. Holloway, Being and God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Being and to Natural Theology (St. Louis: Saint Louis University,1963), 219-303.
[32] Klubertanz and Holloway, 304.
[33] God is not self-caused. He is un-caused. Self-causality is a contradiction, for to cause one’s existence, one would have to exist prior to oneself, a notion which is what the British might call “poppycock.”
[34] “Who is,” describing the self-existence of God.
[35] Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), 96.
[36] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Book 1, First Part, Q 12, article 12. Emphasis added.
[37] Klubertanz and Holloway, 305.
[38] Gilson, 97.
[39] Klubertanz and Holloway, 314.
[40] The opposite would be to use the term in an equivocal manner, but that would leave us in complete agnosticism about God.
[41] Klubertanz and Holloway, 305.
[42] Hick, “The Real and It’s Personae and Impersonae.”
[43] The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is not that God is multiple in Being but multiple in Person. As Norman Geisler succinctly puts it, God is one “What” and three “Whos.”
[44] Moreland, 41-42.
[45] Mortimer Adler, Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990), 14-15.
[46] Hick, “Pluralist view,” 48.
[47] Apprehension is not a broad as comprehension, which would entail comprehensive knowledge of God, which is clearly impossible. R. Douglas Geivett and W. Gary Phillips say something similar: “In the Christian tradition, it is true, God is not fully and finally comprehended by us; but God is partially and veridically apprehended. To the extent that God is known at all, he is known truly.” See “Response to John Hick,” in Okholm and Phillips, 77.
[48] John Hick, Problems of Religious Pluralism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985), 50.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Geivett and Phillips, 79.
[51] Maritain’s views on soteriological exclusivism were not researched for this project, but what is important for the current purpose is that he was an exclusivist from an epistemological viewpoint.
[52] Jacques Maritain, The Rights of Man and Natural Law, Translated by Doris C. Anson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 20-21.
[53] Jacques Maritain, Scholasticism and Politics, Third Edition (London: Robert Maclehose and Company,1954), 8. See also Ward and Evans, 66.
[54] Jacques Maritain, “The Achievement of Co-Operation Among Men of Different Creeds.” The Journal of Religion 21, no.4 (October 1941): 364.
[55] Jacques Maritain, Man and the State (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), 78.
[56] Ibid., 76.
[57] Ibid., 113.
[58] Ibid., 113-14.
[59] Ibid., 110.
[60] Ibid., 111.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Maritain, “Co-Operation,” 369.
[63] Maritain, Man and the State, 110-11.
[64] Klubertanz and Holloway, 314.
[65] Ibid.
[66] Maritain, “Co-Operation,” 365.
[67] For the sake of the current purposes, it is not essential to consider the non-Catholic Christian denominations, assuming they hold even implicitly to the historic creeds of the universal church, as different from the primary analogate. For the sake of this paper, the secondary analogates are other theisms, such as Judaism and Islam, as well as other major religions based upon pantheism and polytheism. Maritain considered atheism an enemy to all religions and to society as a whole.
[68] Leaving aside for now the issue of how pro-life Christians should respond to pro-choice Christians.
[69] Demonstrably true does not entail universally recognized. Geometric theorems are demonstrably true, but many who are not mathematically inclined never assent to their truth.
[70] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, paperback edition (New York: Collier Books, 1960), 34.
[71] Ibid., 28.
[72] Ibid., 39.
[73] Norman Geisler, “Pluralism, Religious,” in Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999), 598.
[74] Ibid., 601.