FROM SYNCRETISM TO RELATIVISM TO PLURALISM:

(The Challenge of Pluralism In Our Multicultural Maze)

Texts: Acts 4.12 - In no other name; Philippians 2. 6-11

Four cultural indicators: Humanism - Loss of God; Secularism - Loss of Shame; Pluralism - Loss of True Truth; Narcissism - Loss of Meaning.

1. How does the Christian faith relate to other faiths?

2. Do these other faiths have any place in God's plan of salvation?

3. In what sense is Christianity unique? (Visser THooft, Newbigin, Kung, and Hick)

These questions have challenged such diverse thinkers as John Hick and Hans Kung. The radical shifts in responding to the above questions have witnessed a fundamental debate between Syncretism and Pluralism. These developments provoke a diversity of opinions between experts and a widening public interest. The heart of this divergence is expressed in the proliferation of Interfaith Dialogues (see especially Peter Beyerhaus's book. Missions; Which Way? Humanization or Redemption (E.T. Grand Rapids, 1971; and James Sire's work. The Universe Next Door. IVP, 1976); it covers the basic structures of alternative World Views; also see Morman Anderson, Christianity and World Religions: The Challenge of Pluralism (IVP, 1984);

also my work, "Beyond Diversity: Postmodern Pluralism.”)

Christianity must face the challenge of Pluralism! What is pluralism? It states that no religion, world view, or religious figure is of ultimate universal importance. Each religion has its own world view, i.e., way of interpreting reality. No way is superior to any other.

It is false to claim that all religions reduce to "one common denominator." Yet, there are conflicting religious views which compete for men's allegiance. The challenge of pluralism developed into "One Universal Religion." The disease of Syncretism reared its ugly interpretive head with the developments within classical Liberalism, the Social Gospel, the World Council of Church, the World Council of Religions, etc.

The fundamental fallacy of "Real syncretism" is expressed by A. Oepke. "Real syncretism is always based on the presupposition that all positive religions are only reflections of a universal original religion and show therefore only gradual differences." So the syncretic approach may be defined as "The view which holds that there is no unique revelation in history, that there are many different ways to reach the divine reality, that all formulations of religious truth or experience are by their very nature inadequate expressions of that truth and that it is necessary to harmonize as much as possible all religious ideas and experiences so as to create one universal religion for mankind." (Visser T Hooft, No Other Name (London, 1963), p. 11).

Syncretism is not a new phenomenon. It was present in Ancient Israel, where it was vehemently denounced by the prophets. It was characteristic of Hellenism and Gnosticism and was wide spread in the Roman Empire, where the Emperor Alexander Severus had in his private chapel not only the statues of the deified emperors, but also those of the miracle worker Appollonius of Tyana, of Christ, of Abraham and Orpheus (Visser T Hooft, p. 15).

It found one of its most powerful advocates in a Muslim emperor, Akbar, the Great, who tried to create a new universal religion. His vision was to bring the different religions of the Mongul empire into one, but in such fashion that they should be both "one" and "all" (i.e.. Pantheistic) with one great advantage of not losing what is good in one religion while gaining whatever is better in another. In that way; honor would be rendered to God, peace would be given to the peoples and security to the empire (Lawrence B. Akbar (London, 1932), pp. 130ff.)

It burst forth anew in Rousseau and Goethe, who believed that there was "a basic religion, that of pure nature and reason and that this is of divine origin (Visser 'T Hooft, p. 26) and the same fundamental approach is shared by such men as W. E. Hocking and Arnold Toynbee (cf. resurgent Gnostic Pantheism). The latter rejects what he calls the "argument" of the Christian Church that it is unique in virtue of the uniqueness of Christ and His incarnation. It is not credible that "God, which is another for love for man by becoming incarnate in a human being, will have done this self sacrificing deed of emptying himself at one tine and place and one only." What remains are the teaching of Christianity. But these are not exclusively Christian. For the idea of God's self sacrifice is found in ancient nature worship and in Buddhism." (Visser 'T Hooft, pp. 35ff.)

Here the fundamental fallacy is that Hocking, Toynbee and a multitude of comparative religion gurus tend to interpret Christianity wholly in terms of ideas (vs. world view context of interpretation) rather than God's decisive intervention into history. But Christianity is not a philosophical system; it is, as Lesslie Newbigin says, "primarily news and only secondarily views." (A Faith for This One World (London, 1961) p. 15). And if the news is denied their views hang in the air. (Visser T' Hooft, p. 35).

There is a vast modern and post modern manifestation of Syncretism, especially in/from the East, quite apart from the fact that Hinduism and many of the traditional religions in Africa and much of Asia, are syncretistic in their very nature.

Thus the great Hindu mystic Ramakrishna would speak of himself as the same soul that had been before a Rama, as Krishna, as Jesus or as Buddha. His teachings were propagated by Swami Vivekananda, who appeared at the Worlds Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, that those present should proclaim to the world that all paths led to the same God and who exclaimed, "May he who is Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura Mazada of the Zoroastrians, the Buddhist of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews,' the Father in Heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out your noble ideas." (Visser T', Hoof fc/pp.'36ff)

It was Gandhi who insisted that the need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the different religions. "Any attempts to root out traditions, effects of heredity, etc., is not only bound to fail, but is a sacrilege. The soul of religion is one, but it is encased in a pluralism of forms. The latter will persist to the end of time. Truth is not the exclusive property of one single scripture. . . . I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is as divine as Krishna or Rama or Muhammed or Zoraster." (eg. B.C. Dewick, The Christian Attitude To Other Religions (Cambridge, 1953), P. 20).

During the 1960's there was a radical resurgence of non Christian religions and New Age Pantheistic groups in America's post Christian modern culture. Presently the fastest growing religion in the world is Islam and the fastest growing religious phenomena in America is New Age Pantheism in its various forms. The concern of the radical resurgence is to rescue Christianity from the radically syncretic sects. Such, from a Hindu background are the Ranekrishria Mission and the Theosophical Movement, the aim of which is "to rescue from degradation the archaic truths which are the basis of all religion; and to uncover the fundamental unity from which they all spring." (H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (London, 1909) vol. I p. viii).

Such, too, from a Muslim origin is Bahalism, for the nine doors through which men may enter the great Bahai temple in Wilmette, near Chicago, represents the "nine religions of the world" which all find in the Bahai faith the essence of their own belief and the definitive revelation of ultimate reality. Syncretic movements can also be found in Japan, where the symbol of Ittoen, the Garden of Light, is a swastika with a cross at the center and a sun in the background, and whose prayer is 'Teach us to worship the essence of all religions and help us to learn the one ultimate truth.' (Visser T* Hooft, pp. 44, 45). All forms of spiritualism, moral rearmament, etc., are definitely syncretistic in nature (Visser T'Hooft, p. 48). Syncretism occurs in Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lovers which is frankly and faithfully a phallic novel, which seeks to resuscitate the spirit of the ancient fertility cults. The height of Lawrence's syncretism is to be found in The Man Who Died, where he goes so far as to depict the risen Christ as discovering true life when he embraces the priestess of the temple of Isis and says, "This is the great atonement, the being in touch, the grey sea and the rain, the met narcissus and the woman I wait for, the invisible Isis and the unseen sin are all in touch and at one." (The Man Who Died, p. 148).

Visser 'T Hooft justly remarks that

Syncretism, in many different forms, has the same basic motif: thus we hear a hundred times and in all languages that there are many ways to God and that God is too great, too unknowable to reveal himself in a single revelation and once for all. Syncretism is thus essentially a revolt against the uniqueness of revelation in history. True universalism, it claims, can only be gained if the pretension that God has actually made himself definitely known in a particular person and event at a particular time is given up. . . . thus syncretism conceives of religion as a system of insights and concepts rather than as a dialogical relation between a personal God and His creature. They all tend toward some form of gnosis, sometimes of a more rationalistic kind, sometimes more intuitive or esoteric. They seek to realize salvation rather than to receive it. In this way they are often unwittingly, contradicting their own claim to universality. For they in fact exclude these religions for which revelation of a personal God is the central category." (Visser T' Hooft, pp. 4l8ff)

Newbigin correctly identifies the great divide between the quest for ultimate truth and their view of history. There are two ways in which one can seek unity and coherence beyond all the multiplicity and incoherence which human experience presents it. One such effort at unity is the wheel 1 All of nature is a cycle of birth, growth, decay and death through which plants, animals, human beings and institutions all pass; this suggests the rotary wheel - ever in movement yet returning upon itself. The wheel offers a way of escape from the endless and meaningless movement. One seeks the center of the wheel where all is still and one can observe the ceaseless movement without being involved in it. The wise man in one of the many spokes. Dispute among the different ways to salvation is pointless; all that matters is to find their way to that timeless, motionless center where all is peace and where one can understand all the endless movement and change which makes up human history - understand that it goes nowhere and means nothing." (L. Newbigin, The Finality of Christ, pp. 65ff.; also Hooyewerf, "Cultural Wars: Christian Conviction in a Pluralistic Square" Reformed Review (Spring 1996, vol 49, no. 3, PP. 165-178).

In resurgent neo-pagan gnosticism of World Wisdom, World Religions there is total rejection of classical Christianity and thus a reinterpretation of the cross, the resurrection, sin, salvation, etc. The great search in this pantheistic mode is to escape scepticism and materialism and not a return to the faith of the fathers. Neo pagan gnosticism enables participants to feel mystically one with every child of God. This totally rejects the uniqueness of the Incarnation as a unique historical event in which God Himself intervened decisively in the world He had created. It is precisely at this point that the Christian must of necessity part company with a great deal that is included under the comprehensive umbrella of mysticism. Most often this phenomenon is an emotional or intuitive form of Syncretism.

The metaphor of the wheel must be challenged by the Christian metaphor of the road. Life is a journey, a pilgrimage. "The movement in which we are involved is not meaningless movement; it is movement towards a goal." And along that road there lies a whole succession of historical events: chief among which are, of course, the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection. The traveler must choose between two or more alternative paths and the goal, the ultimate resting place, the experience of coherence and harmony, is not to be found save at the end of the road. The perfect goal is not a timeless reality hidden from behind the multiplicity and change which we experience; it is yet to be achieved; it lies at the end of the road (L. Newbigin, The Finality of Christ, p. 66).

From Syncretism to Religious Pluralism

In our post modern culture we can trace our journey from Religious Pluralism through the Universe of Faiths. In order to control our brief journey we will discuss only two of the prophets of a universe of faiths; John Hick and Hans Kung's magistral presentation of avant-garde Roman Catholic scholarship. Lesslie Newbigin's brilliant critique of these two works is found in his books, A Faith For One (London, 196); The Finality of Christ (London, 1969); and The Open Secret (Eerdmans, 1978).

Hick naturally revolts against the classical Roman Catholic doctrine that was expressed at the Council of Florence (1435-45) in the declaration that all these outside of the Roman Catholic Church are lost. In Hans Kung's, On Being a Christian, he recognizes that very few Roman Catholics or Protestants believe this conciliar decision in our post modern humanistic, secularistic, pluralistic, narcissistic culture. He quotes from the Vatican II Schema, Dogmatic Constitution of The Church (promulgated in 1964) This also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience, nor does divine providence deny help necessary for salvation to those who without blame on their part, have not arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but who strive to live a good life, thanks to His grace. Whatever goodness or truth is found among them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel (Chp. II, para. 16, Hick, God and The Universe of Faiths, pp. 125ff.)