Religious Pluralism

In its strongest sense, religious pluralism holds that no single religion can claim absolute authority to teach absolute truth. The word of God is not literal religion. On the contrary, religion attempts to describe God's utterances. Given the finite and fallible nature of human beings, no religious text written by Man can absolutely describe God, God's will, or God's counsel, since it is God apart from Man who reveals the divine thoughts, intentions and volition perfectly.

Religious pluralists point out that nearly all religious texts are a combination of an assortment of human observations documented, for example, as historical narratives, poetry, lections, and morality plays. Accordingly, a distinction exists between what may be claimed as literal in a religious text and what may be metaphorical. The text, therefore, is open to interpretation. In this light, no religion is able to comprehensively capture and communicate all truth. Although all religions attempt to capture reality, their attempts occur within particular cultural and historical contexts that affect the writer's viewpoint.

Believers in religious pluralism, in this sense, hold that their own, self-made syncretistic (the combination of different forms of belief or practice)belief system is "true". In other words, their religion is the most complete and accurate interpretation of the divine, though they also accept that other religions teach many truths about the nature of God and man, and that it is possible to establish a significant amount of common ground across all belief systems.

Many religious pluralists claim that members of other faiths are searching for truth in different ways, and that human fallibility limits all religious knowledge. Despite these limitations, religious pluralism does not preclude individual thought or participation in rituals or spiritual experimentation with any chosen religion or community; rather, such worshippers practice according to personal traditions, preferences, and community norms, while recognizing a host of practices or interpretations by others.

Many Western pluralists hold that it is both permissible and beneficial for people of all beliefs to develop some form of religious pluralism. They believe that it is intellectually legitimate to do so because of a series of critical changes that have taken place since Biblical times. Our perception of Man's place in the natural world has changed as a result of changes in scientific thought. Philosophers challenge humanity to rethink its understanding of truth, and the very way that language is used to convey this understanding.

Adherents of religious pluralism, in the scholarly sense of the term, reject religious relativism They do not believe that all religions are equally and unequivocally true. The reason is that they recognize that different religions make certain claims that logically contradict each other. For example, most Christians believe that Jesus was God incarnate and part of a Trinity, while both Muslims and Jews hold that it is impossible for any human to be God incarnate, and that no Trinity exists. Christians believe that Jesus was crucified and died on the cross, while Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified and did not die on the cross. Therefore, claiming that both Christianity and Islam are both simply "true" gives rise to a logical contradiction.

However, the distinctions between the concepts of religious pluralism and religious relativism are much more blurry and ill-defined. In common usage the two terms are often interchangeable.