In my previous two posts, I've focused on answering the question of who will ultimately experience eternal life in the New Heaven and New Earth (Revelation 21:1).

Already, two options have been eliminated:

1. That only those few people who specifically heard and believed in Jesus during their earthly lives will be saved (i.e., exclusivism).
2. That everyone will be saved, eventually (i.e., universalism).

So if I don't want to affirm either of the above points, then it seems I must accept the idea that at least some people who never heard the gospel during their earthly lives will end up having eternal life.

The only question then is how does this happen.

Is Religious Pluralism A Good Answer?

John, who wrote the book of Revelation, was given a vision of heaven by God:

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" (Revelation 7:9-10. See also Revelation 5:9-10)

If we take the words "all" and "every" in the above verse literally (and I see no reason not to), then this group of people who John sees standing in heaven before God, praising God for saving them, must include at least one person from each tribe and nation that has ever existed.

This must include people from tribes and nations that disappeared before Jesus was born, and before Christian or Jewish missionaries were able to cross the oceans to other continents to tell the people there about God.

It must also include people who are living today who are isolated from the rest of the world, such as the people on North Sentinel Island.

Therefore, one answer to the question of how some people from every tribe and nation will be saved might be religious pluralism.

Advocates for religious pluralism say that all religions teach the same truths and can lead people to the same God and/or the same heaven. So there can be pluralists in many different religions. Pluralists might also argue that all religions teach the same core values, and so the differences between them don't really matter.

Today in Western cultures, religious pluralism is common. Even way back in 2008, a study by the Pew Research Center discovered that 7 out of 10 religious Americans believe that many religions can lead to eternal life. And this includes Christians:

A majority of all American Christians (52%) think that at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life.1

Religious pluralism is even being endorsed by some influential Christian leaders. Thus, it's worth considering whether religious pluralism is true, and if it's not, then Christians should know how to refute it.

It also means that if religious pluralism isn't a Biblically persuasive answer to my question, then we'll need another solution, such as inclusivism. But I'll talk more about that later, after we look at religious pluralism.

The Appeal of Religious Pluralism

On the surface, religious pluralists can appear to be tolerant and open-minded. In contrast, those who reject religious pluralism might be seen as narrow-minded or judgmental.

For example, some people might say:

Belief in Jesus Christ as the only Savior of sinners is not fair or equal treatment. It is prejudicial and promotes intolerance to believe in a God like that. It is not politically correct.2

In this climate any diversity of choice is tolerable except one: the mentality that some choices are right and others wrong, some beliefs true and others false. That cannot be tolerated.3

Thus, because our Western culture claims to strongly value tolerance, religious pluralism could seem like an attractive position to endorse.

Religious pluralism could be especially appealing in contrast to the negative portrayals of God's character that can be found in exclusivism, especially those versions of exclusivism that rely on double predestination.

And no wonder! I don't see how anyone who believes in a perfectly good and loving God could accept the idea that God has eternally chosen to condemn most of humanity to eternal suffering in hell, without considering any individual's free choice in the matter.

It's even worse when these proponents of double predestination argue that God acts this way because God needs most people to suffer eternally in hell in order to fully reveal God's glory to the few lucky people that God chooses to save.

So I totally agree with the late Baptist theologian Clark Pinnock, who said:

This negative control belief is what drives certain Christians straight into theological pluralism. They are led to extremes in their revising of Christian doctrine chiefly because they cannot accept God, as revealed by Jesus, as one who would consign most people to hell and deny them access to salvation. Theological liberalism reacts sharply and correctly to such a cruel and incoherent reading of the gospel that has all too often marred the orthodox tradition and assassinated God's character. Speaking boldly, pluralists are right on this point; insofar as certain of its representatives have presented God as a cruel and arbitrary deity, orthodox theology badly needs revision and correction.4

Religious pluralism might also appear to be supported by instances of interfaith cooperation and dialogue.

For example, the Abrahamic Family House that's being built in the United Arab Emirates will open in late 2022.5 It includes a church, a mosque, and a synagogue, as well as an educational center. In Berlin, Germany, there is also a project underway called the House of One, which will include a church, mosque, and synagogue, all under one roof.6

By having three religious institutions on one site, it could appear to people who don't know much about Christianity, Islam, and Judaism that there really isn't much difference between them, or that they all worship the same God.

This impression is strengthened when influential religious figures like Pope Francis say things like:

We are all children of God, all, even the unbaptized ones, yes, even those who believe in other religions, or those who have idols.7

On February 4, 2019, Pope Francis and The Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, co-signed a statement titled "A Document On Human Fraternity For World Peace And Living Together". One line of the statement says:

The pluralism and the diversity of religions, colour, sex, race and language are willed by God in His wisdom, through which He created human beings.8

This line in the statement was theologically criticized by Thomas Weinandy, an influential Catholic scholar, who wrote that:

By implication, it [this statement] not only devalues the person of Jesus, but it also, and more so, strikes at the very heart of God the Father’s eternal will. Thus, such studied ambiguity undermines the very Gospel itself.9

Unfortunately, even after this criticism, and as recently as 2021, Pope Francis said:

If in the past, our [religious] differences set us at odds, nowadays we see in them the richness of different ways of coming to God and of educating young people for peaceful coexistence in mutual respect.10

So to summarize, in only the past few years, Pope Francis has said that all religions are just "different ways of coming to God", that the diversity of religions is actually willed by God, and that every person is a "child of God" regardless of what he or she believes.

It certainly seems like Pope Francis is endorsing religious pluralism, rather than upholding the uniqueness of Christianity. I don't see how he could say these things and still believe what the Bible teaches about the need for everyone to come to faith in Jesus Christ for eternal salvation, as I'll explain later in this post.

But, if anyone wants to get nit-picky, perhaps there are ways that faithful Christians could endorse the Pope's statements in a qualified way.

Because yes, all humans are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27, 9:6) whether they believe in God or not.

But this is not the same as being a child of God, since the Bible says that only those people who believe in Jesus and thus receive the Holy Spirit are born again and become children of God (John 1:12-13, Romans 8:16-17, John 3:5-8, 1 Peter 1:3). So I couldn't agree that all people are "children of God" in this proper, Biblical sense, because doing so would endorse universalism, which has several theological problems as I've discussed here.

And it's true that everything that God allows to occur in the world is willed in some way by him, including the existence of other religions, just as God allows evil, sin, and suffering to also exist in the world. If God truly didn't will that these things temporarily exist, they wouldn't, because God would eliminate them.

But the fact that God allows other religions to exist temporarily in this sinful world doesn't mean that God approves of every religion equally.

God certainly disliked many past religions that involved the worship of idols, temple prostitution, and sacrificing of children. The Old Testament is full of God's condemnation for these activities and for the worship of false gods. God also criticized the Israelites when they turned their own God-given religion into a system of legalistic rules that promoted self-righteousness (e.g., Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:13, Luke 11:42, Micah 6:8).

And as will be discussed in my next blog post, I would agree that there may be some hints of divine truth in other religions which the Holy Spirit can make use of to draw people toward God.

But that doesn't mean the truth about God is equally clear in every religion, or that truth itself is relative and subjective. The Bible says that while in the past, God allowed people to follow false religions,

The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30-31)

The man referred to in the verse above is obviously Jesus. This is why, after Christ's resurrection, God gave the great commission to the Church to go to all nations and teach the gospel and baptize people into faith in Christ (Matthew 28:18-20).

So I don't believe that Christians should endorse religious pluralism, or get involved with other religions in ways that make it appear that we all worship the same God or that other religions can also lead to eternal life.

However, it shouldn't only be Christians who have problems with religious pluralism. Anyone who truly values tolerance should also have a problem with the claims of religious pluralists, because religious pluralism is actually an intolerant ideology!

Problem 1: Religious Pluralism Is An Intolerant Ideology

Yes, you read that correctly. But why is this the case?

As Clark Pinnock notes, the problem with religious pluralism is that

It rules out people's most precious beliefs in things normative. It asks Muslims, in effect, to deny that the Koran is central to God's purpose. It asks Jews to deny that God spoke definitively through Moses. It asks Christians to deny that Jesus is the Incarnation of God in history. Is that a reasonable or even a practical thing to ask people to do? Obviously, it is not.11

And it's not just unreasonable to expect religious believers to deny the most central and distinctive features of their own belief systems, but it's also intolerant:

The suggestion that Christians or Buddhists [or people of any faith] should give up their most precious beliefs for the sake of politeness is a form of intolerance on the part of the people who claim to be so tolerant. No one is in the position to refuse religious communities the right to hold distinctive convictions.12

After all,

Religions do not simply say the same things as one another about God, humanity, salvation, and hope. To say that they do is intellectual dishonesty. There are intractable differences of doctrine, and therefore choices to be made. To wave a wand over religions and declare that they are saying the same thing is nonsense. This is sloppy pluralism, false tolerance, and indifference to truth.13

How ironic, then, that religious pluralism can't tolerate the claim that not all religions lead to the same God.

It's like how some people claim they value tolerance for all sorts of different ideologies and lifestyles, but then these same people often become extremely intolerant of anyone who they judge to not be as 'tolerant' as they themselves claim to be!

But what's the origin of the claim that it's intolerant for religious believers to believe that their own religion is true while other religions are false?

Pinnock traces religious pluralism to the modern, Enlightenment-era claim that "it would be unfair for truth not to be equally and simultaneously present to everyone."14

In the 1700s, philosophers reacted against the idea that the truth about God that was necessary for salvation was found only through Scripture or the Christian tradition, because then many other people would not have had access to it. In response, many philosophers turned to look for what they could learn about God from reason or nature, because they thought that both reason and nature were universally accessible sources of knowledge about God.15

Yet again, I wonder if this accusation that it's unfair for truth to not be equally available to all people was partly a reaction to traditional Christian theories of exclusivism and double predestination. Because even Christians might wonder how it could be fair for God to send some people to hell, just because these people lived at a time or in a place where they didn't have access to the truth.

Perhaps, then, a good, solid, Biblical theory of inclusivism could help reduce the appeal of religious pluralism, at least, for those who want to uphold the truth of Christianity.

However, there will always remain people who don't want to accept the idea that one religion is more true than others. For these people, I suspect their religious pluralism might just be a way for them to reject the clear, Biblical claim that faith in Jesus is the only way to have eternal life, as we'll see in the next section.

Problem 2 : Jesus Is The Only Way to Salvation

Among evangelical Christians, I've sometimes heard people say that we should emphasize the common ground with people of other religions as a starting point for evangelism.

For example, a Christian talking to a Muslim might mention the idea that there is only one true God, or compare the Koran to the Bible. Or, Christians might emphasize similarities regarding Christian and Islamic concepts of the afterlife. Or perhaps try to find some agreement in areas of ethics, or the importance of prayer, charity, modesty, fasting, etc. Islam even mentions Biblical figures such as Jesus, Mary, Abraham, and Ishmael, and so there is some overlap there.

This isn't quite religious pluralism, but I think it's the same logic that paves the way for pluralism. What we should be emphasizing is the differences between Christianity and other religions we encounter, rather than the similarities.

Sure, Muslims believe in one God, but that's not enough for salvation (James 2:19). There are also Bible verses that say that the gods and idols of other faiths are actually demons (Deuteronomy 32:17, Psalm 106:36-38, Revelation 9:20, 1 Corinthians 10:19-20). Thus, it's difficult if not dangerous to say that all religions worship the same God.

There is also one major point that makes Christianity and Islam completely incompatible:

The Koran says that God has no Son, in a number of verses.16 That means that to Muslims, Jesus was just a human prophet, and not God's Son incarnate. So worshipping Jesus would be a major sin, according to Islam.

Similarly, non-Messianic Judaism denies the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. (The doctrine of the Trinity is that there are three distinct divine persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—within the single being of God). The Old Testament clearly says there is only one God, and that it is a sin to worship anyone or anything that isn't God (Exodus 20:3-5, Deuteronomy 5:7-8).

This would mean that to non-Messianic Jews, Christians are idolaters and blasphemers when we worship Jesus, who we believe was the second person of the Trinity incarnate. This is what the Apostle Paul thought about Christians before his conversion, and it was why he passionately pursued Christians to have them arrested (Acts 8:1-3).

But as I've talked about here, if Jesus wasn't truly the Son of God incarnate and fully divine, then there is no way for Jesus to fully reveal God to humanity, or reconcile humanity with God.

If Jesus wasn't the Son of God incarnate, it would also make Jesus a liar, because he claimed to be God (e.g., John 10:30). If Jesus weren't God, it would make his disciples idolaters, because they worshipped Jesus, and the early church prayed to Jesus and in the name of Jesus.

But because of who Jesus was and how he died on the cross for the world's sins (Hebrews 7:27, Hebrews 10:12, 1 John 2:2), the New Testament is incredibly clear that there is no way to have eternal life other than believing in Jesus:

• "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me'." (John 14:6)

• "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God." (John 3:16-18)

• "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him." (John 3:36)

• "And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12)

• "For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith." (Romans 3:22-25, NRSVA)

• Jesus, "who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:6-11)

All of these verses are a significant challenge to the claims of religious pluralism. They will also be very important to address in any Biblically-sound theory of Christian inclusivism.

How Christians Can Respond to Religious Pluralists

So, how can Christians respond to someone who claims that all religious truth is relative or subjective?

Ask them what basis they have for that belief. Because if they truly believe in relativism, then even their belief in relativism must itself be relative. Their belief in relativism is also ultimately a form of religious faith, since there can be no evidence given to definitively support it.

What if they claim that "all religions are varied responses to ineffable divine reality?" Then we can ask them "if in fact the divine is so ineffable and unknowable, how does one know any path is valid?"17

We can ask these people to think about what if their belief is wrong and objective truth actually exists? Would they want to know it? And how would they know when they have found it?

Once again, I agree with Clark Pinnock when he writes:

Truth claims in religion... must be viewed like claims in science or philosophy or medicine. In those areas, [ideally] there is no leveling down, no denial of real differences, no overlooking of bad mistakes. Instead, there is a concern for truth and a willingness to search it out in the midst of disagreements.18

Thus, the way to be truly respectful of different religions would be to take all of the world's different religious claims seriously, then admit that many of these claims are are mutually incompatible, and attempt to discern which religious claims are actually true, and which are false.

That's why it's great to spend some time reading theology to learn what we believe and why we believe it, while being open to changing our minds if, in the process of searching for truth, we come across a better argument.

Because ultimately, all truth will lead to Jesus, who is the Truth (John 14:6).

Conclusion

As a result of the reasons I've laid out here and in my two previous blog posts, I'm convinced that none of the options we have examined so far (exclusivism, universalism, or religious pluralism) are fully compatible with the Biblical evidence regarding the question of who will ultimately have eternal life.

That means the only theological position left which can be compatible with all the different verses that we've examined thus far is some sort of Christian inclusivism.

In my next post, I will examine a few different proposals for how Christian inclusivism might work, and some concerns I have with some of them.

This will be the set-up for the final article in this series, where I'll lay out my own theory of Christian inclusivism.

I hope to explain how these difficult verses above about salvation depending on faith in Christ alone can be compatible with saying that eternal salvation is truly open to all people, even those who didn't hear the gospel in this life, or who died before they were capable of having personal belief in Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Footnotes:

• 1. Pew Research Forum, "Many Americans Say Other Faiths Can Lead to Eternal Life", December 18, 2008.
• 2. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 11. See also 69-70.
• 3. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 9-10.
• 4. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 19.
• 5. "About the Abrahamic Family House", Abrahamic Family House
• 6. House of One
• 7. Leonardo De Chirico, "Do Atheists go to Heaven? Pope Francis says yes", Evangelical Focus, May 1, 2018.
• 8. Pope Francis and Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, "A Document On Human Fraternity For World Peace And Living Together", The Vatican, February 2, 2019.
• 9. Thomas G. Weinandy, "Pope Francis, the uniqueness of Christ, and the will of the Father", Catholic World Report, June 2, 2019.
• 10. Thomas D. Williams, "Pope Francis: Religions Are All ‘Different Ways of Coming to God’", Breitbart News, October 5, 2021.
• 11. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 70.
• 12. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 71.
• 13. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 70-71, see more on 72.
• 14. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 70.
• 15. Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, Sixth Ed. (Chicester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 59-60, 128-129.
• 16. Some relevant verses can be seen in English translations of the Quran, "Chapter (17) sūrat l-isrā (The Night Journey)". More verse are listed by Matt Slick, "Islam by topic: Son of God", CARM.org, June 10, 2016.
• 17. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 72-73.
• 18. Clark H. Pinnock, A Wideness in God's Mercy: The Finality of Jesus Christ in a World of Religions (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1992), 71, also see more on 134-136.