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1 Knowing God through Religious Pluralism

       Tinu Ruparell

      RESEARCH LEVEL 2

      Editors’ Introduction

      Good academic writing is clear and elegant. This opening essay meets both of those conditions. It is a provocative thesis: All serious theology must be shaped by religious pluralism. He believes that this has always been the case; and now it must continue to be “consciously” so in the future. He suggests five characteristics of such theology, which he sets out as the heart of the essay. He then concludes by responding to some of the objections that the reader might have to his argument.

      Theology is always hybrid (see Box 1.1).

       Box 1.1

      Tinu Ruparell puts his thesis front and center. All theology draws on a range of traditions and sources. He then unpacks this assertion by insisting that all serious theological systems must take religious pluralism seriously. This is a shocking assertion. It means that all those who primarily work as theologians within a tradition are, in the view of Ruparell, not doing serious theology. The opening of this essay is controversial and provocative. The reader is invited to engage with the argument.

I propose this statement as axiomatic for any theology which takes religious pluralism seriously, and of course all theology must take religious pluralism seriously. Indeed I contend that no theological system can be taken seriously if it does not countenance the facts of religious plurality at its very foundation. To fail to do so is to be blind to the conditions of human thinking about the religious. The religious traditions we encounter, study, may participate in, critique, and/or promote have all originated, developed, and continue to exist within a context of religious plurality. This, I submit, is an empirical fact needing little further argument.¹ Moreover, all theology, like all theorization, is inherently comparative.² In order to understand and create theology the scholar partakes in comparative and generalizing activity, which requires emic and etic reference. Religious pluralism is thus an intra-religious concern as much as it is an interreligious one. No tradition, and therefore no theology, can thus be considered without conscious reference to the Other since all traditions were originated and continue to develop with explicit or implicit reference to other traditions which form their contexts. The importance of religious pluralism for our understanding of the theology, as well as for the production of novel, creative theology, cannot be understated. In what follows I will argue that the practice of theology must be recast to be explicitly pluralistic in a way that has not hitherto been the case. Theology must be more obviously interreligious and hybrid because theology is already interreligious and hybrid, but currently does not recognize itself as such (see Box 1.2).³

       Box 1.2

      Footnote 3 is a lovely note. The author is anticipating an obvious objection: If all theology is – as a matter of current reality – hybrid, then why is this program so radical and provocative? He uses the footnote to answer this objection. He is writing alert to potential criticisms to his arguments.

      In redescribing theology through religious pluralism, I argue, it becomes more powerful, more relevant, and more useful. More powerful in its increased capacity to accurately describe the human condition; more relevant as it breaks out of its chains as a chauvinist practice of merely priestly interest; and more useful as it regains a role in broader economic, social, political, and cultural spheres.

      Before I proceed to describe some elements of a pluralistically remade theology, an issue of terminology needs to be clarified (see Box 1.3).

       Box 1.3

      Ruparell is a

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