Thinking Through

Although we don't always accept the idea, the ways we think about the world, about what's in it and about what, if anything, is responsible for it, all shape each other. Ideas about one part of existence influence ideas about other parts, unless we decide not to reflect on the consequences of our ideas and just accept what someone else says without thinking.

The latter choice has never crossed the mind of United Methodist theologian Schubert Ogden, and his 1992 book, Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? offers a good example. The book was initially a set of lectures about the topic of truth in religion, edited and slightly revised for publication during Ogden's final year of teaching at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. I was in the class he taught in his final semester, although our class did not directly address the subject matter of the book.

Ogden points out that Christians today are confronted far more often with people of other religious faiths than in earlier times, and are also confronted with an unpleasant reality of history: People have done wrong in God's name, especially to people of some of those other religions. Christians have grouped themselves mostly into three different responses to those other religions, but as Ogden considers these responses he sees problems with each of them.

Up through the end of the 19th century, most Christians held an exclusivist understanding of the relationship between their faith and other religious faiths: Christianity was the true revelation of God and other religions were not, or at best were faulty and clouded version of the truth. Much of the damage done to people of other religions was done in the name of this exclusivist position. As Christians began to realize the wrongs they had done in the name of their faith and began to learn more about other religions as well as their own faith, many moved from an exclusivist understanding of their faith to an inclusivist one -- that many other religions did indeed possess part of the truth. In fact, some people who practiced these faiths with integrity and dedication were probably included in the salvation God promised, although they arrived at it by other means. Coming into vogue in the middle of the 20th century was pluralism, which reduced borders between different religions even more. Most religions have similar goals, this idea suggests, and they are different ways of arriving at the same truths.

Ogden's commitment to process philosophy and process theology leave him uncomfortable with all three of these positions. The first two require Christianity to be the norm by which other religions are measured, and process theology's understanding of God doesn't accept that idea as credible to human experience or even as appropriate to a proper understanding of Jesus Christ himself. Pluralism asserts that religions have common grounds and common goals, but careful and respectful understanding of different religions helps us see that they are not as similar as a pluralist would want us to believe.

Although he is careful to say he does not claim his fourth option is the right answer, Ogden obviously leans towards it. He suggests that there may be one or more true religions, since religions are ways that human beings try to handle the ultimate questions of existence: Why are we here, and what is the meaning of life? Obviously for Ogden, Christianity fulfills that definition and he considers it a true religion, but he does not follow the exclusivist claim that it's the only true religion.

Is There Only One True Religion is clearly and logically argued, with each step building on the previous ones and all of the assumptions plainly laid out. For folks who disagree with the concepts of process theology, or for those who don't accept Ogden's statements about the impossibility of determining the original apostolic Christian witness, his rejection of one or more of the other options is not as necessary as he believes. The world today is not the strictly clockwork universe that helped inspire Alfred North Whitehead's development of process thought -- things like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and quantum nonlocality make room for a lot of weirdness that clocks don't measure so well. Ogden also doesn't address anywhere Paul's assertion in Romans 1:20 that proper knowledge of God is available outside the Christian tradition and that verse's impact on the three options with which he is inclined to disagree.

Your humble blogger has mentioned he works mired in his traditional Christian theism, which means that he doesn't share Ogden's process theology or the thoughts that proceed from it. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of worthwhile material to consider in Is There Only One True Religion, and effort spent discovering where one's thought is congruent with or diverges from Dr. Ogden's is likely to be rewarded with a better understanding of those thoughts.