From Plurality to Pluralism: A Philosophical Defense of Religious Relationship against Relativism

One of the major projects of the epistemology of religion is to address some form of what I will call the "insularity problem." We can state this problem in terms of Alvin Plantinga's notion of a believer's "noetic structure," which is "the set of propositions he believes, together with certain epistemic relations that hold among him and them." (1) The insularity problem arises when different believers possess divergent noetic structures whose beliefs contradict one another and, most problematically, lack common grounds on which to adjudicate their claims. (2) It will become clear that the insularity problem is not only that the beliefs of divergent noetic structures conflict but--as suggested by Plantinga's mention of "epistemic relations"--that their modes of justification do, too. In William Alston's terms, believers with different noetic structures maintain divergent "'doxastic practices.'" (3) Insularity, then, is opposed to intersubjectivity and undermines public contestability, because there are no shared rules of discourse across insular noetic structures. Insularity challenges religious knowledge itself inasmuch as religions' plurality and mutual insularity subjects them to skeptical questions about their ability to justify any of their truth-claims over rival claims emerging from contrary noetic structures. My aim in this essay is to suggest a notion of religious knowledge that respects the challenge of the insularity problem. This religious epistemology must steer a course between the exclusivism of asserting one noetic system over all others and the relativistic agnosticism of being unable to commit to any. My proposal, which will draw on diverse philosophical and theological sources and considerations, can be stated most briefly as follows: Religious knowledge consists in entering into soteriological relationship with ultimate reality. This formulation is so abstract as perhaps to appear either opaque or vacuous. It is much more easily recognizable in the terms of specific traditions: for example, Judaism's redemptive submission to God, Christianity's salvific relationship with Christ, Vedantic Hinduism's emancipatory absorption into the world-spirit, or Mahayana Buddhism's enlightening acceptance of emptiness. For the first term in this formula, "soteriology," we might be able to substitute a more descriptive term such as "salvation-liberation" and still cover a broad range of historical religions; for "engagement," I will argue that "relationship" is a good model with useful generality; but the final term (God, Christ, emptiness, or what have you) tends to be highly religion-specific. For lack of more tradition-neutral religious vocabulary to employ, then, I have framed this epistemology in the fairly generic terms of soteriology, engagement, and ultimate reality. As a result, it might seem so general as to be devoid of content. This is to be expected since, as we will see, it is only in the context of a particular religion that religious truth takes on its substance. Up to that point, it is just as it should be that our definition of religious truth should be as purely formal as possible. Nor does its formality make the definition empty--this notion of truth allows, I think, a formally inclusive epistemology that renders intelligible the substantive truths instantiated in various religions, even as they confront apparently contradictory ones. What we can have, then, is a religious epistemology that is pluralistic without falling prey to relativism, one that equitably grants the possibility of truth to different belief systems, notwithstanding apparent insularity and mutual contradiction, without giving up on a reasonably robust transreligious notion of truth. Although truth will lurk as a regulative ideal in the background of what follows--since without it questions of justification have little meaning--much of my discussion will center on the notion of justification, without direct reference to the distinct question of truth. …