1647.Pluralists

SCANNED PDFPluralists seem ever to confuse truths with claims to truth. Thus Race, for one-in this agreeing with Cantwell Smith-says that "Pluralism in the Christian theology of religions seeks to draw the faiths of the world's religious past into a mutual recognition of one another's truths and values, in order for 1:ruth itself to come into proper focus" (148). But no such "mutual recognition of one another's truths and values" is required in order for truth itself to come into proper focus. All that is required for truth to come into focus is a "mutual recognition" of one another's truth-and value-claims for what they are: claims that are equally in need and equally deserving of critical validation in terms of our common human experience and reflection. 
Similarly, I do not have

to value another's religious experience as "an authentic encounter with the divine" (Race: 139), nor do I have to reject "the model which views the truth of one expression as automatically entailing the falsity of another which is at odds with it" (Race: 144). Whether or not another's religious experience is an authentic encounter with the divine is the very thing that religious inquiry or dialogue is required to determine, by validating the truth-claims that are made on the basis of the other's experience. All that is necessary in advance of such inquiry or dialogue is an evaluation of the other's truth-claims as not only needing but deserving critical validation equally with one's own. As for rejecting the model that views truth and falsity as mutually exclusive, the very idea is absurd, unless the phrase "the truth of one expression" is construed to mean "the truth-claim advanced for one expression." Symptomatic of the same confusion are protestations that pluralism does not entail that all religions are equally trueor are the same. Thus Race, for example, repeatedly assures his reader that he has "not accepted theview rhar all fairhs are equally rrue, or of "equal value, or are ulrimarely saying rhe same thing" (143; cf. 140). Bur such proresrarions would be unnecessary if one had clearly disringuished berween saying rhat all claims ro rruth are equally valid, as rhe pluralist is only roo undersrandably raken ro be saying, and saying, insread, thar all claims to truth are equally in need and deserving of being critically validated through religious inquiry or dialogue. Because the pluralist typically confuses truths with truth-claims, however, she or he can convincingly avoid affirming a priori that all religious truth-claims are equally valid only by failing to affirm clearly and coherently that all such claims are equally in need of critical validation and f\deserving of it. 4 November 1989