The Next Pluralistic Philosophy of Religions

John Hick has used revolutionary metaphors in recommending his pluralistic philosophy of religions. To turn from a focus on the particulars of one’s home religion to a focus on the universally available Real is, he famously says, a Copernican “revolution” in religious thought. Hick says that those religious adherents who abandon the traditional positions of exclusivism or inclusivism, positions that recognize but one religious path as valid, and move to a pluralism in which many paths are equally efficacious, are “crossing the Rubicon” (Hick and Knitter 1987: viii) and this is also a revolutionary slogan. In the light of this language of revolution, most of the critics of Hick’s pluralism might be labeled “reactionary.” They reject the view that religions can be equally valid paths. They resist the pluralist project and continue to defend some form of exclusivism or inclusivism. Thus the lines are typically drawn in philosophy of religion between conservatives and progressives. Largely unappreciated, however, is a set of recent critics of Hick’s pluralism who argue for what I take to be an authentically new position in philosophy of religion, namely, the position that the real problem with Hick’s revolution is not that it is pluralistic, but that it is not pluralistic enough. What they call for is “more pluralism,” or a “fuller and more genuine pluralism.” The more pluralistic position that they are calling for, however, once its implications are clearly seen, undermines the traditional distinctions between conservative and progressive, and for this reason I argue that the position to which they point holds promise for the future of philosophy of religions.