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Encountering Religious PluralismThe challenge to Christian faith and missionMore superficial than substantialENCOUNTERING RELIGIOUS PLURALISM: CAN EVANGELICALS LEARN FROM WORLD RELIGIONS: Our church is in a 40% Gujarati-speaking area: most of the people that come to our toddlers groups, holiday clubs and family outreach events are Muslim or Hindu with a splattering of Catholics and materialistic atheists. Religious pluralism is an empirical fact in our part of North London. How does the church present the gospel in such a context? More contentiously can the church learn anything from its neighbours of different faiths? Netland's book seeks to answer the first question while McDermott attempts the second. AnalysisI was excited to read Netland's new book in this area. This book is not a how-to manual but a philosophical and theological analysis of pluralism. The book is in two sections, the first maps the philosophical terrain and the second examines a Christian response. The highlight of the book comes in the first section where Netland offers an alternative analysis of contemporary culture dismissing the current fashion amongst evangelicals of linking the birth of modernity with the advent of the Enlightenment and seeing postmodernity as a rejection of Enlightenment's faith in reason. Unfortunately the rest of the book was not as fresh and stimulating but seemed to be a rehashing of Netland's doctoral work on John Hick and responding to critics of his previous work Dissonant Voices. Gospel insights?Gerald McDermott's book 'Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions' is a much easier but far more contentious read. McDermott argues that God has revealed gospel insights in non-Christian religions and that the church may therefore learn from other religions. McDermott argues that we are not learning things that are not contained in the Bible but we discover a fresh emphasis and perspective. McDermott's case rests on two interesting foundations. Firstly, there are 'hints' in such figures as Balaam and Melchizidek who apparently received special revelation outside of contact with God's chosen people. This is weakly argued as these figures do not offer insight to God's people instead as they came into contact with God's people; their revelation was put into context. The same applies to Paul's quotation of the Greek philosophers in his Areopagus speech. Paul is not saying the philosophers had special revelation from God but merely that their knowledge concurs with special revelation. McDermott's second argument is that great theologians like Augustine and Calvin used non-Christian systems to help them restate the Christian faith in new and interesting ways. The argument runs thus: if Neo-Platonism helped Augustine why shouldn't Buddhism help us? A better argument would have been that the missionary encounter of the church with other religions forces the church to contextualise its message and in this process discover afresh the implications of the gospel. Peter's encounter with the Spirit working in Cornelius' house could have been used as an example. McDermott attempts to show points of contact for Christians encountering people of other faiths. This is the most interesting part of the book, but one wonders if McDermott is taking a pick-and- mix approach to the religions he examines and whether the points of contact are more superficial than substantial. Learning to listenIt is vitally important that we evangelicals find ways to listen to people of other faiths. We Christians are not claiming to be better parents, spouses, citizens than others as we are saved by grace, therefore there are bound to be insights we can learn from others. Our humility may open up evangelistic possibilities. Then, as we encounter people from different faiths and seek to communicate the gospel meaningfully to them, we will rediscover previously hidden gospel treasures. These two books are helpful additions to the growing library of books available to equip the church to deal with our multi-ethnic multi-faith culture. However in my opinion the best book written on this subject remains Lesslie Newbigin's 'Gospel in a Pluralist Society'. Krish Kandiah© Evangelicals Now - January 2003 |