Frontline: Oklahoma City, OK > "All religions are basically the same."

Copan, Paul. True for You, But Not for Me: Overcoming Objections to Christian Faith. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2009.

In the second century, a pagan named Celsus attacked Christianity and said, “It makes no difference if one invokes the highest God or Zeus or Adonai or Sabaoth or Amoun, as the Egyptians do, or Papaios, as the Scythians do.” In other words, all religions are basically the same.

You may be familiar with the parable of the Indian blind men who are touching different parts of the elephant. Each man tries to describe the creature from his own vantage point—a rope, a tree or pillar, a large wall, a snake, a fan, a spear. They argue about who’s right, but in the words of the poem, they rail on “in utter ignorance” about an animal none of them has seen.

Biblical critic Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781) wrote a story called Nathan the Wise, about a father “in a far Eastern clime” with a priceless magic ring. In a not-so-wise move, he promised the ring to each of his three sons, though he could only give the authentic ring to one. So he had two replicas made, separately called his sons into his presence, gave them each a ring with his blessing, and then died. Each son left thinking that he had the magic ring; the others had the imitations. Like the blind men, each son believed he had the true perspective and was the true prince of the house.

Vainly they search, strive, argue. The true ring was not proved or provable— Almost as hard to prove as to us now What the true creed is.

In the sacred Hindu text Bhagavad Gita, the god Krishna says, “In any way that men love me, in that same way they find my love: for many are the paths of men, but they all in the end come to me” (4:11).

PLURALIST ILLUSTRATIONS

We’re familiar with various pictures or analogies to “prove” that religions are “basically the same.” Perhaps religions are like roads leading to the top of a mountain. Or maybe religions are like a mosaic or kaleidoscope, in which a number of differing beliefs make up a complete, beautiful pattern about the nature of God/Ultimate Reality. Or religion might be like a hologram, which projects different three-dimensional images through interferences of light coming from separate sources; likewise, different religious perspectives, though shaped by culture and history, point toward something transcendent.

Or the image could be one of all rivers leading us to the same place. Raimundo Panikkar (b. 1918) suggests three rivers symbolize his point: the Holy Land’s Jordan represents the religion of “christianity”; Rome’s Tiber symbolizes Western civilization—“christendom” with its Crusades and modern missions; these must give way to India’s Ganges (with its various headwaters, confluences, and tributaries), which embodies “christianness”—personal religious experience that respects the otherness of the world’s religions. The Christian faith is one of many ways to go with the spiritual flow.

DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS

To criticize religious pluralism fairly, we need first to know what it is, lest we merely knock down a straw man. One popular but naïve view is that “all religions are basically the same.” Let’s tackle this before moving to more sophisticated versions.

First, people who say all religions essentially are alike haven’t studied religions very deeply; they differ dramatically. A Christian Scientist will deny the reality of evil, sin, sickness, and death. An orthodox Christian will readily acknowledge these inescapable aspects of our fallen world. A Muslim will deny that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross to redeem us from darkness.

If you’re a theist, you believe that a Creator exists; not so if you’re a Buddhist. As the Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso, b. 1935) has put it,

Among spiritual faiths, there are many different philosophies, some just opposite to each other on certain points. Buddhists do not accept a creator; Christians base their philosophy on that theory.

By definition, truth excludes something—error or falsehood. Christians and Buddhists can’t both be right on this matter; either God exists or he doesn’t. Muslims and Christians can’t both be right about Jesus’ death. Certain Hindus hold to reincarnation followed by ultimate personal extinction; by contrast, the Christian’s view of the afterlife involves death, judgment, and then union with (or separation from) God. Apart from the massive differences regarding the nature of ultimate reality, human identity, the human problem and its solution, the nature of history, and the afterlife, sure, all religions are “basically the same”! Actually, the one thing all religions have in common is that they differ radically from one another.

Second, that all truth is God’s truth doesn’t mean other religions are 100 percent wrong. When Jesus claims to be “the way and the truth and the life” ( John 14:6) and the unique revealer of the Father (Matthew 11:27), he illustrates an exclusivist (or particularist) religious perspective. When nonbelievers ascribe arrogance to Christians, we should point out that we’re not making up exclusivist claims—Jesus said it first.

When we assert that God’s revelation in Christ is true, we’re not saying non-Christian religions are wholly false or that Christ-followers have a monopoly on truth. Indeed, we can learn a lot by listening to others, and we shouldn’t claim exclusive possession of truth, because all truth is God’s. As George MacDonald (1824–1905) rightly remarked, “Truth is truth, whether from the lips of Jesus or Balaam.”

We can say, for instance, that theistically Muslims are a lot closer to the truth than are Buddhists, who deny God’s existence. Various religions can affirm common belief in human rights, personal virtue, religious liberties, and so forth—without compromising Jesus’ saving uniqueness. But the Christian maintains that God’s revelation in Jesus is true and that other religious systems are in error where they contradict his revelation.

So rather than a black-and-white approach, the Christian faith acknowledges degrees of continuity and discontinuity between itself and other faiths. On the one hand, we should avoid the extreme of being so inclusive that we obscure Christ’s saving uniqueness; on the other, we shouldn’t emphasize exclusivity or discontinuity to the extent that our faith has no point of contact with non-Christian thought. As someone has put it, as we study religion Christianly, we shouldn’t imagine a venomous snake in every religious rope (on the conservative side) or a rope in every venomous snake (on the liberal side).

Third, certain aspects of various world religions or philosophically oriented worldviews may have a preparatory role for the reception of the gospel. In Acts 17, Paul gives his famous speech at the Areopagus (Mars Hill), where Stoic and Epicurean philosophers have gathered. What’s interesting is how Luke presents Paul as a kind of Socrates, apparently borrowing identical language from Plato’s Apology to show certain similarities: having engaged in dialogues in the marketplace, Paul, like Socrates, is accused of proclaiming foreign deities and engaging in new teaching.

Furthermore, Paul refers to an “unknown God” altar; this dated back to the sixth-century BC, when Epimenides had come to aid plague-ridden Athens. Paul, who quoted him in Titus 1:12, cites him here: “In Him we live and move and exist” (Acts 17:28 NASB). He also quotes the Stoic poet Aratus: “We also are His children” (v. 28 NASB). In addition, he appropriates Old Testament theological truths (especially from Isaiah 40–55) that Stoics, though not Epicureans, could appreciate (e.g., the repudiation of temples to contain divinity). Yet the Stoics were pantheists who rejected a bodily resurrection and believed in impersonal fate instead of a personal Providence.

In the same spirit, the early church fathers appropriated truths and pictures from pagan religion and myth to point people to Christ’s fulfillment of the highest human ideals, hopes, and aspirations. In the spirit of “all truth is God’s truth,” Justin Martyr wrote (in his Second Apology), “Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians.” The classical writer Virgil, in his Fourth Eclogue (c. 37 BC), prophesied: “The Virgin now returns” and gives “birth,” and a “new race descends from heaven on high,” ushering in a “golden” era “o’er earth’s domains”; Augustine spoke of how Christ fulfilled this vision. Or, in Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus’s being lashed to the (wooden) ship mast while sailing past the alluring Sirens was taken to be a foreshadowing of Christ’s anguish on the cross. The earliest believers sought to show that their faith wasn’t some novel idea but rather is rooted in timeless ideals and fulfills aspirations and experiences as old as humanity itself.

As with Paul’s biblically rooted appropriation of certain Stoic ideas, the Bible portrays the world’s religions and philosophies as a mixed bag. Truth is mixed with error, good with bad, common grace with human sin and blindness. In some religions more than others, dark and oppressive forces are obviously evident (cf. the language of cup/table of demons, darkness, Belial in 1 Corinthians 10:20–21; 2 Corinthians 6:14–16). Despite the bridges Paul built with Stoics, there is a downside—even a demonic element—to Stoicism, which included physical elements called the stoicheia, a term Paul uses (cf. the elementary principles of the world in Galatians 4:1–11). These spiritual forces oppress and enslave humans through legalisms and ideologies. As the theologian Karl Barth warned, we must take care not to think “Christian” religiosity is exempt from such oppressive dangers.

I’ve spoken with Muslim converts to Christ who have recounted how Islam’s emphasis on the Creator’s awesome transcendence helped pave the way for belief in Jesus. Some rule-driven religions have similarities to the Mosaic Law’s role as a tutor, guardian, or schoolmaster “to lead us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24). Think, too, of Don Richardson’s appropriation of religious or folk traditions and tribal hopes or ideals to point to the one true God who has spoken in Christ (e.g., the “peace child” as a redemptive analogy for Christ as God’s Peace Child for humanity). The Confucian view of benevolence (ren)—love to others in an ordered society—can pave the way for understanding the fuller biblical concept of Christian love. Mahayana Buddhist doctrine emphasizes the self-sacrificial bodhisattva, who postpones nirvana to help others enter it first. This idea, though not equivalent, can open doors for speaking of the self-giving Savior who lays down his life that others may find salvation and belonging in God’s family.

Of course, we shouldn’t carelessly adopt non-Christian religious terms in order to build bridges; some words and categories may bring more confusion than clarity. For example, the nebulous Hindu term avatar (“incarnation”), used for Krishna and other deities, is problematic. Hinduism (1) doesn’t have a clear dividing line between the human and divine; (2) often uses this term loosely, applying it to gurus and holy people as well as gods; (3) isn’t based upon the historicity of once-for-all events (an actual historical incarnation of Krishna is utterly irrelevant to Hindus); and (4) differs from the Christian affirmation of the eternal Son of God’s taking on human nature and keeping it forever (rather than shedding it).

Furthermore, we shouldn’t baptize other religious traditions as having saving significance. Yet these can to varying degrees be divinely used instruments to attract people to Jesus. Indeed, just as the Israelites “plundered” the Egyptians’ gold, Christians should omnivorously study religion. That is, we should learn from and—when possible—biblically appropriate and transform themes from other religions, just as from literature, movies, philosophy, and so on. While we may disagree about how much benefit, say, pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle can bring to Christian thinking, the theologian-philosophers Augustine and Aquinas, in my view, helpfully utilized important themes: evil being a deprivation or corruption of goodness (Augustine with Plato), or the relationship of a given thing’s nature to its purpose (Aquinas with Aristotle).

In the end, we see that Jesus of Nazareth is the historical fulfillment of the greatest genuine human ideals and yearnings, found throughout the world’s religions, fairy tales, epics, and legends. The incarnate Christ is “myth become fact,” and, again, as Paul tells his pagan audience, [God] “is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). God in Christ perfects and fulfills the highest hopes and ultimate aspirations in all cultures, philosophies, and religions.

SUMMARY

All religions aren’t “basically the same.” They differ profoundly, in major ways. What they have in common is that they are so different.
All truth is God’s truth, which means we should affirm truth wherever we find it—including in other religions.
The world’s religions are a mixed bag of truth and error, of goodness and even demonic influence. (Religiosity in “Christianity” isn’t exempt either.)
Some aspects of various religions may help pave the way to the gospel, which is the fulfillment of all religions’ and philosophies’ highest ideals, aspirations, and hopes.

PLURALIST ILLUSTRATIONS

DEFINITIONS AND EXPLANATIONS

SUMMARY

FURTHER READING