Theology of religions

The theology of religions is the branch of Christian theology that attempts to theologically and biblically evaluate the phenomena of religions. Three important schools within this field are pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism, which describe the relation of other religious traditions to Christianity and attempt to answer questions about the nature of God and salvation.

The American theologian Langdon Brown Gilkey argued that the political situation of the West following World War II set up a need for Christian thinkers to reconsider the place of other religions specifically because of the changing political world:

The most common model of the view that one takes of other religions has been viewed in a simple, three point model, first articulated by Alan Race.

Pluralism is basically the belief that the world religions are true and equally valid in their communication of the truth about God, the world, and salvation. The chief expounder of this view is John Hick of Claremont Graduate School in California, who first propounded it in his book God and the Universe of Faiths (1973). It has been notably criticized in the declaration Dominus Iesus by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

This is the popular view that all religions lead to the same God and all ways lead to heaven. According to Hick, Christianity is not the one and only way of salvation, but one among several. To a pluralist such as Hick, Christianity is not the absolute, unique, and final way to God. While pluralists assert the validity of all religions, they also deny the finality of all religions. According to Hick, in the evolutionary scheme of things in which at isolated ages and places the early religions are succeeded by higher religions, it is the same message of God that comes distinctly to a particular group but in a different form from the others. Hick challenges the older view that Christ or Christianity must be seen at the center of religions. Rather, he says, God must be seen at the center of religions. The pluralistic contention is that although religions have different outward forms, all have the same source.

To an evangelical Christian, such pluralism only means the abolition of kerygmatic mission (i.e., the mission of evangelizing the world with the salvific gospel of Jesus Christ). Pluralism has been criticized for masquerading as Christianity when in fact it is an invasive force that comes from outside of Christianity and imperialistically demands the surrender of Christian distinctiveness. Pluralists respond that Christian pluralism is not an invasive force at all, but actually arises from tensions within the Christian tradition, through a process of auto-deconstruction. Another common evangelical criticism of pluralism is that the religions of the world are fundamentally and irreconcilably different. To value them equally requires a devaluation of propositional truth claims. It is for this reason that pluralism is often treated as a form of self-defeating relativism, though pluralists generally do not accept this label. According to John Hick, "Religious pluralism is emphatically not a form of relativism." Hick considers himself a critical realist.

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