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It is at best misleading to say that the true religion could only be "one particular religion among others, distinguished from all the rest solely by the unique adequacy with which its particular concepts and symbols answered to the need that each religion exists to meet" (On i'lleologyTheology: 110). It would be far better to say that the true religion is to be understood analogously to the true church, or the visible church, which, as the Westminster Confession sagely observes, "hath been sometimes more, sometimes less, visible." By analogy, one could say that the true religion is more or less visible in all the different religions and that what any paIiicular particular religion in principle has the right to claim is not that it simply i."" is the true religion, but that the true religion subsists in it as well as in any other religion just insofar as the other religion substantially agrees with it. (I have long since come close to saying just this when I have distinguished between "claiming that one's own religion is the only true faith and claiming, instead, that any other religion must also be true just insofar as it both confirms and is confirmed by the truth in one's own.") 

By saying that the true religion subsists in a particular religion, I mean that, even if it is h"llse false that the true religion is to be found only in that religionreligion, it may still be true that the only true religion is to be found in that religion.

But what constitutes the true religion? If what constitutes the true church, as I should argue, is not any particular Christian beliefs, rites, and social organization, but solely and simply valid witness to Jesus Christ, by analogy, what constitutes the true religion is not any particular religious beliefs, rites, or social organization, but rather valid witness to the meaning of ultimate reality for us. 

In this connection, the ecclesiological statement that the true church itself is the primary Christian sacrament and, as such, sacramentum .mllitis salutis totius mundi _ becomes relevant. For one could say analogously that the true religion itselfis itself is the primary religious sacrament and, as such, "the sacrament of the salvation ofthe of the whole world." If and insofar, then, as a particular religion's claim could be sustained, that the only true religion subsists in it, it would indeed be a valid sacrament of the whole world's salvation,  _ analogously to the way in which this would also be the case with any particular church that could validate its claim that the only true church is to be found in it.

n.d.; rev. September 2003; 10 December 2008