Pluralistic Inclusivism

K. P. Aleaz , the prophet of Pluralistic Inclusivism, is one of the pioneers among the theologians of religion in India, who has recognized the limitations of pluralism in explaining religious truth(s) available in religions (theistic and non-theistic). Pluralism as defined by its major proponents is governed by the general understanding of the universality of truth. The dominant opinion is that truth and wisdom present in various religions are only fragments of the absolute knowledge. For example, the universal theistic religions like Hinduism, Christianity or Islam envision truth as absolute and what we today perceive are different expressions of truth. Hence in order to get an ultimate vision of truth we need to accept and sum up all the fragments of truth, which is possible at least theoretically. This view is problematic when we approach it from our particular experiences as well as from the perspective of postmodernism . Our experiences speak of truths and realities in plural, which are also attested by the uncompromising presence of various religious traditions and postmodern theories of knowledge. How do we account for the plurality of truth is a question that is better answered with the help of postmodern theories, rather than the traditional theory of essentialism or foundationalism.

Pluralistic Inclusivism and limitations of classical Interpretations of theology of religions
Aleaz knew that the classical interpretations of theology of religions in terms of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism are not sufficient to explain our religious experience and personal knowledge. Therefore, he advanced the theory of Pluralistic Inclusivism. By this he rejected exlusivism completely but found some meaning in bringing together inclusivism and pluralism. He found that inclusivism can be camouflaged as exclusivism, therefore, he was more inclined to see himself as a pluralist. Since classical pluralism, as it is interpreted by its major proponents like John Hick , which claims that everything is legitimate and true as expressions of truth, cannot withstand the test of experience as noted above, prompts one to accept what Aleaz has attempted in terms of Pluralistic Inclusivism. In this approach one can get rid of the arrogance implied in inclusivism, the idea that what we believe is capable of accepting all truths everywhere and therefore can escape the slushy state of pluralism, where nothing is solid and authoritative, as truth becomes evasive and a useless piece of argument . In Pluralistic Inclusivism one can arrive at one's own particular understanding of truth and take a particular standpoint, as in the Istadevata concept of Hinduism where one is free to accept a personal deity without denying other deities and thus make our perception of truth meaningful and usable. This is what prompts one to accept the significance of Plurlistic Inclusivism in the theology of religions, and further prompts one to move towards a postpluralistic theory of religions as a more viable approach to the plurality of truth(s) in religions.

As we have noted, Pluralistic Inclusivism is capable of absorbing the merits of both pluralism and inclusivism and it can reject what is not acceptable to our preference of truth interpretation, which is not possible either in pure pluralistic or inclusivistic positions. Pluralistic Inclusivism thus opens the doors to other ways of knowing truth, with the right to accept or reject, avoiding the ambiguity of pluralism and arrogance of inclusivism and exclusivism. As Aleaz views it, Pluralistic Inclusivism allows religions or cultures to draw from one another and enrich one another. It aims at making one pluralistic as well as inclusivistic simultaneously. Here lies the strength and at the same time the weakness of Pluralistic Inclusivism, attempting to hold together what are supposed to be two different positions, two different perspectives, though both are worked out in the essentialist paradigm. Since Pluralistic Inclusivism so long as is based on the essentialist framework it is as problematic as Pluralism. A pluralistic inclusivist is not more than a pluralist. However, the merit of Pluralistic Inclusivism is that it invites us to see the limitations of pluralism as a theological position. Plurality cannot be reduced to pluralism as pluralism cannot account for contradictions, that is, it cannot accept a theory that rejects the theory of pluralism. Pluralistic Inclusivism needs a postmodernist framework in order to achieve what it wants to achieve, namely harmony of religions, even to hold together negations.

The idea of Truth as Hermeneutical and Postmodern Theories

The Linguistic turn in philosophy has made it clear that to understand something is no more to form mental “representations” of it as modernism insisted, rather, understanding is a matter of actively interpreting our world experience—by means of language. The enlightenment belief that reason is neutral and it would lead to truth irrespective of context, tradition, or language has been found shaky. Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger rejected the concept of knowing subject by the “lived experience” of the involved subject which would discover itself. The concept of absolute truth or universally valid knowledge at best remains a myth, but a very convenient and popular one. It has been true that since the time of the ancient Greek Sophists, search for a universally valid knowledge was the passion of philosophers. The Sophist Gorgias argued that nothing could really exist and that if anything did exist it could not be known; if knowledge were possible, it could not be communicated. Protagoras, another major sophist, held that no person’s opinion can be said to be more correct than another’s. However, the Sophists were put to oblivion by the opposing schools of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; all of them held that it is possible to have exact and certain knowledge of world and its “unchanging and invisible forms,” or ideas. They held that what we could see and touch are imperfect copies of pure forms and abstract reasoning would provide genuine knowledge of these forms. Contemporary scientists have also been obsessed with such a search for a theory of everything, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking included. However, it can be also argued that the universe is so vast and we legitimately cannot make any absolute predictions of what is true in the trillions of galaxies raging away billions of light years, quiet independent of our world, or if related, in a way quite unknown to us, though the tendency of the human mind is to reduce everything to an understandable formula, with which one can handle and interpret the world. One must remember that one could interpret the world with any number of paradigms and each has its own validity within the specified time and space. As Thomas Kuhn in his Structure of Scientific Revolutions made it clear, different paradigms can coexist in the world, though some gaps in the old paradigms make new paradigms necessary and the process need to continue. Similarly, theories in religions also have no means of claiming absolute knowledge of truth, if there is any. Therefore, true pluralism must account for plurality rather than reducing it into fragments of one and the same truth. Truth cannot be reduced to singularity. Plurality is the truth about truth.


What we need is a coherent approach to plurality. Plurality is an everyday fact, it is every where. The classical way of approaching the question of plurality by way of essentialism, that there is an underlying unity behind all plurality, is discredited by the postmodern theories. The various attempts to find some foundational truth starting from Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant have been challenged since the time of David Hume. To find a universal truth is only a dream as we have pointed out above. We are afraid of plurality and attempt to avoid it as in exclusivism or make it meaningless by arguing that all are the same. Thus we make all religions partial truths of some Supreme Truth. Emergence of monotheistic religions have immensely contributed to this type of mindset. It satisfies our curiosity and delivers us from some dilemma. We feel that we have something solid to believe. Descartes has made mind the universal truth. Religions make God the universal truth. Monotheism has been considered as a triumph in the evolution of religion, by reducing all religious truths into one.

It is the exclusive viewpoint that really does justice to monotheism: one may either accept or reject the truth. One cannot hold the two together. It also enforces a dualistic mind setup - things are viewed in black and white, truth and non truth, good and bad light and dark, at least penultimately. In monotheism, there cannot be duality in the ultimate sense as truth is singular and nothing else has any absolute existence. In monotheism untruth or evil is a negation of truth, a non-being. In postmodern thinking good and evil are not dual entities or even binary opposites, that is, graded realities, but they are interpreted truths that make existence meaningful. One has no meaning without the other. So we cannot speak of truth in religion or about fragments of truth in all religions since what we call as truth is our way of interpreting what we experience. In postmodernist view truth is hermeneutical, not a subjective or objective entity, but something that exists only in relationships. We can only say that in religions truth and its negation exists and one cannot accept the truth and reject the untruth as conceived in Pluralistic Inclusivism. What we need is a theory that does justice to our experience of plurality in its contradictions and negations.


In his Meditations (1641) Descartes identified “clear and distinct ideas” as the foundation for knowledge. He made the foundation of all knowledge the certainty of the self and as a corollary of the existence of God. He has been following the mathematical ideal of certainty to know that “something is so and can’t be otherwise” and has asserted, cogito ergo sum, I cannot doubt that I who doubts exist. The result has been a theory of dualism between mind and matter, thinking thing (res cogitans) and extended thing (res extensa), which made mind as the source of knowledge and not empirical evidence as empiricists argued. In the postmodern world knowledge is considered as the production of various factors "such as the demand for it, creative capability to satisfy the demand, facility to access the existing knowledge bases, ability to make use of the associated knowledge from several disciplines and the degree of societal acceptability of the new knowledge"

If the tendency in science is to hold that truth is available to the future through scientific researches, the religions view it the other way round, that truth has been known or revealed to the founders of religion and as time passes on it gets degenerated and the very necessary thing is to realize the truth by going back to the golden past, whether it is back to the Bible times or to the pristine Vedic times of the Rishis or to the times when Quran descended to the earth. The common human tendency is to generalize one's experience as universally true and make oneself believe that what one holds is true and all other opinions can at best be only partially true. Pluralists are sure enough that different religious experiences are valid expressions of one and the only truth, although each religion would insist that its own interpretation of truth is more comprehensive and closer to the absolute truth. Even the so called pluralistic religions become intolerant when their interpretation of pluralism is rejected and there by prove that they cannot accept some truth different from that of their own. Pluralism can accept only that truth which does not reject its theory of truth and thus makes pluralism less than capable of accepting plurality of existence, in its contradictions.

The emergence of hermeneutical truth goes back to the time of David Hume , when empiricists like him found it difficult to establish knowledge on any sure foundations. George Berkeley held that one cannot have absolutely certain knowledge of the physical world, a position which was contrary to what was held by rationalists. All the classical philosophical schools such as the Cartesian rationalism, Lockean empiricism and German idealism accepted the criteria that knowledge is valid if it is universally true and accepted beliefs that are self evident, incorrigible and “evident to the senses” as foundations of sure knowledge. Immanuel Kant too agreed with the rationalists on the possibility of getting exact and certain knowledge, but he was willing to agree with the empiricists that such knowledge is more informative about the structure of thought than about the world outside of thought. He was able to make room for faith by setting limits to reason, by establishing the finiteness of knowing.

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s linguistic analysis, further elaborated the nature of perceived reality in terms of language games. His Philosophical Investigations marked the shift in linguistic analysis. He held that no truth is possible outside the language. Language is inextricably woven into the fabric of life. Language determines our knowledge. Languages are shaped by cultural systems and traditions into which we are born. For Hans-Georg Gadamer the text itself was the product of particular history and culture. All these developments finally led to the realization that no absolute knowledge is possible as the enlightenment conceived.

Rejection of Essentialism in the postmodern world

Further, the resurgence of identity politics among the submerged or subaltern groups challenged the unitary notions of human kind as false universalism that blocks substantive differences such as race, gender, or ethnicity, and contested all traditional knowledges. Poststructuralism and the strategy of deconstruction addressed this growing concern. Jacques Derrida’s notion of decentred universe challenged all fixed or absolute notions of centre and periphery and has conceived universe as a free play. There is no authoritative centre, which makes validation of knowledge necessary. Derrida by his concept of the “differance,” has rejected the structuralist theory that meaning is produced in the difference of words and establishes that truth is known from its absence, somewhat similar to the advaitic concept of "neti" or the apophatic position of the Cappadocians. The poststructuralist strategy of deconstruction by Derrida has categorically established the absolute impossibility of attributing to any text one single ultimate meaning. Here objective truth is replaced by hermeneutic truth. Truth exists only in interpretation. There is no final or arbitrary truth as such. Derrida's deconstructionist approach helps us to recognize the politics behind the construction of meaning. That means, sacred texts, such as the Bible, do not have a single ultimate meaning nor are such texts necessarily authoritative. Deconstruction is a rebellion against absolute truth claims. It contests the given knowledge absolutized through hierarchical dualities which Derrida has termed as binary oppositions, that creates superiority and inferiority structures of thought and social practices. Deconstruction disrupts and displaces the hierarchy and dismantles its authority and creates space for the “marginals” to present themselves as social agents. The web of relations outside the text may determine both the meaning of the text and the nature of its authority. It is no more necessary for truth to rely on some “extralinguistic” reality in order to exist as in the essentialist, foundationalist position. Instead, the legitimacy of plurality of stand points and interpretations over an absolute or a contextual conception of knowledge or truth is affirmed. The linguistic turn has led to the postmodern argument that there are no truths, but only rival interpretations. There is no need of any foundation, either by way of intuition or by experience and there is no universal truth for religions to rely on. This way of looking at things saves us from the burden of reconciling the differences in order to tailor contradictions into harmony. Contradictions contribute to our understanding and awareness of it makes us humble to accept life in its manifold expressions, as life itself is the product of various factors.


Postliberal theology as propounded by Goerge Lindbeck and the Yale School of Religions has made some strides toward a postpluralistic approach to religions. The postliberal theology has as its premise a postmodernist nonfoundationalist thinking in its rejection of the modern project of metanarratives and essentialist view of reality. It rejects the foundationalist claim, “that knowledge is grounded in a set of non-inferential, self-evident beliefs.” For Lindbeck there is no way for us to check our experience against any uninterpreted experience, or ultimate truth. The nonfoundational or antifoundational character of Postliberalism goes back to Karl Barth or even to Aquinas. Barth held that there could be no “foundation, support, or justification” for theology in any philosophy, theory or epistemology. Karl Barth affirmed the self-authenticating Word of God as the foundation of theology. The truth of this Word is self evident to the believer. It may not make any sense to those who do not share the faith. This Barthian approach to Bible has influenced the Yale postliberalist thinking that other religions or schools of thought can have their own valid set of foundations with no need of authentication from any outside authority. Lindbeck also is open about his indebtedness to Aquinas who wrote that the Christian language about God is true, but we do not know how it is true; we know God loves us, but we do not know what love would be like for God. We cannot go beyond our experience; we can only work within the rules the community has provided to talk about God. As the title of the William Placher’s book suggests, Christians need not "apologize" for their theology, that they don’t have to conform to the non-Christian standards of rationality, or satisfy somebody outside the community about its validity. In expanding this theory, one can say that no religion is bound to explain its rationality to any other religion. Religions are self-validating. To find the meaning and validity of one's position in an outside authority is unnecessary in postmodern thinking. Each religion, each individual is unique and each position is validated internally.


There is no objectively existing datum that can be called religion -- there is no “true religion” as such. Neither are we able to discover truth. We only become real only in relation between objectivity and subjectivity. Since we cannot understand ourselves or others wholly we must focus on what we are made for—relationship. So the encounter with other religions must focus on the relational aspects of the encounter, not in search for authoritativeness but for self-understanding. The relational character of human existence, the network of existence, need to be the common ground between people, defined by way of religions, ethnicity, race, language or gender. This postpluralist approach liberates Christian mission or any missionary religion from the burden of establishing its supremacy or truthfulness against others. Mission becomes establishing relationship. Harmony is relationship. Relationship is possible only when we acknowledge the uniqueness of the other. Essentialism violates the rightful existence of the other, it reduces the other to itself. Religions and ideologies today must overcome the sin of idolizing themselves, idealizing own positions. As Augustine has noted sin is "curving in" on ourselves, either in self confidence or in self-despair.

Defining the world as relationality and the Plural end as Salvations

In order to accept the other, to accept difference, theology should change its universal, fixed, absolute categories of knowledge and values and reorient its theoretical basis to accept the validity of multi-foundational faith, values and practices. If we redefine our world views it is possible to see that we each individual or religion exists as stars in relation to galaxies, or galaxies in relation to the universe or universe in relation to multiverse which are not necessarily centred on any particular point outside of it; the world organism, even the atoms and the subparticles exist only in relationship, one keep the other in its place with their simple presence, mutually influencing and shaping other’s identity. If that relationship is broken the entire universe will collapse. That means, John Hick needs to modify his paradigm of the “solar system of faiths” with sun as the centre and accept a new paradigm of the contemporary universe or multiverse which has no centre at all. One need to transcend the paradigm of Copernican revolution to that of a Quantum revolution in order to do justice to our religious experiences as well as scientific knowledge. Hence our theologies need to be relationally reoriented with respect to individuals, communities, genders, races, and all creation, resisting all efforts to subsume the difference or drift away from one another. If we are willing to accept the relationality as a mode of existence we don't have to define ourselves in terms of exclusivism, inclusivism or pluralism.

The world is what we make. Truth is what we accept. Faith is what we believe. Search for absolute truth leads to totalitarianism and fundamentalism, intolerance and disharmony. What we need to learn is to let others live as we live. Accept the other as neighbour. Coexistence is the ethics of plurality. Love and respect the neighbour. To make the neighbour other than a neighbour is either destroying the neighbour and ourselves. Coexistence need to be extended to the plurality or religions. Pluralism need to be transformed into coexistentiality. Plurality is coexistence. Anything that destroys co-existence, the right of the other to be the other, neighbour to be the neighbour, is violence. Pluralism and inclusivism can be more violent than exclusivism. Pluralism and inlusivism reduces the other in a subtle covert way which exclusivism only rejects openly. Any thing that destroys otherness is sin, violence to existence. True dialogue is possible only when we all believe in the right of other's to exist. When we go to dialogue with the view that we are right and they are wrong then dialogue has no relevance. Today dialogue is practiced with wrong premises. Mark Heim's concept of "Salvations" in plural make expressions of truth more legitimate and conducive to harmony and dialogue than any artificial attempts to bring together contradictions or explain away contradictions.
Pluralist theologians need to be challenged by Mark S.Heim’s rejection of the pluralistic assumption that there can be only one religious end. For the pluralists the singular concept of salvation is universal, a cross-cultural constant in interpreting religious end. A truly pluralistic hypothesis should find space to the different end descriptions for life in different religions. They should give account for the various theories of salvations in religions as valid simultaneously as well as distinctively valid alternatives to our end perceptions, that there is a diversity of realizable religious aims. We need a theory of religions which would make it possible for us not to quarrel with one another on account of different religious goals, then only we can think in truly pluralistic terms. As Mark Heim writes, “The refusal of pluralist theologies to address this question is their primary failing, a manifestation of the very exclusivism they reject.” To import the notion of a singular salvation into interreligious discussion amounts to developing false harmony. To argue that all religions mean the same thing when it comes to salvation is in fact an act of violation of the right of each religion to be distinctive and unique. According Heim, Pluralists need to recognize the integrity of the religious traditions in their own terms rather than to denature them.
Religious aims and fulfillments are various. Pluralist theologians generally deny this. There are a number of proposed religious aims given in various religious traditions and these are of ultimate significance to their adherents. When we credit various religious claims validity of their aims, we presume their difference. In our life we come across alternative possibilities and we make some rather than others concrete. We need to take religious traditions more seriously than the pluralists who subordinate the traditions to a postulated absolute. The hypothesis of multiple religious ends indicate that more than one religious tradition may be truthful in its claims. Each truth claims remain distinct and their experience different as these are constituted by their particular contexts.
So in a postpluralist strand one may argue that religious fulfillment is available to all, but not one identical fulfillment. The thesis that there are different religious fulfillments seems to meet concern of pluralists much more effectively in postpluralism than in the classical pluralist or inclusivist positions. Christians need to recognize that some traditions encompass religious ends which are real states of human transformation, different from that which Christians hope for. Different religious traditions lead their adherents to alternative fulfillments. As Mark Heim has pointed out, the crucial question among the faiths is not "Which one saves?" but "What counts as salvation?" not "Which religion alone is true?" but "What end is most ultimate, even if many are real?" and "Which life will I hope to realize?"
A religious end or aim is defined by a set of practices, images, stories, and conceptions. For instance, for Christians, salvation is in continuing relationship with the Triune God, which was made possible with faith and trust in Jesus Christ, the incarnate God. For some Buddhists the dharma way is indispensable to attain selflessness, the nirvana. "Salvation" or religious fulfillment for any religious community is integrally related to a comprehensive pattern of life developed by the particular community. Someone is "saved" so much as he or she follow a pattern of life prescribed by the community in its ritualistic and sacramental acts. Nirvana is neither an achievement nor is “enjoyed" by one unless that person is prepared by the community for that end. Our religious practices and choices distinctly shape our futures. In order to participate in the distinctive dimensions of Buddhist religious fulfillment in this life, there is no path but the Buddhist path. The same is true of each tradition. Nirvana and communion with God are contradictory only if we assume that one or the other must be the sole fate for all human beings. True, they cannot both be true at the same time for the same person, but for different people, or for the same person at different times, such multiple ends do not create any conflicts in both being true. We love our mother, brother, wife and children. The nature of love is different in each relationship, but there is no contradiction. In V. Chakkariah’s assertion that Hinduism is my mother and Christianity is my wedded love, though there are two different types of love, there is no irreconcilability. On the other hand multiple religious ends become more congenial to human experience and make life more meaningful, without being succumbed to any for establishing one the other for the sake of harmony in relationships. Religious ends are constituted by the meanings that the faiths bring to them. Religious objects or ends are meanings constituted by human culture. Truth and meaning are cultural creations and they are real so far as human existence is concerned. Giving due recognition to the multiplicity of religious means and ends only enhance human experience of life in its plurality.

Notes

Dr. K.P. Aleaz developed his theory of Pluralistic Inclusivism in several of his books and articles. This essay is a humble tribute to my esteemed friend and Guru whom I knew for more than thirty five years.. Aleaz has devoted all his life for the harmony of religions. The theory of Pluralistic Inclusivism represents his sincere efforts to give concrete academic expression to his life’s passion. This article is not a scholarly research in his theology of religions, but a friendly review of his contribution to the theology of religions, but at the same time an attempt to go beyond the essentialism that underlies the theory with the help of postmodernist theories. Wherever I have gone wrong in understanding Aleaz I seek his pardon. I am thankful to the Bishop’s College for asking me to contribute to the Festschrift in honour of Dr. Aleaz..
John Hick is the best known interpreter of religious pluralism. All his major works are republished during the last decade which shows the continuing influence of his writing career which started with the first edition of Faith and Knowledge in 1957. It was reply to Hick’s God and the Universe of Faiths (Macmillan, London, 1973) M. M. Thomas published Man and the Universe of Faiths ( Madras: CSL, 1975). M.M.’s argument has been that “God is not a relevant framework for a situation where the search of all religions as well as secular ideologies are for defining and realizing true humanness in the context of a modern technological society. Our argument in this essay is that Hick’s pluralism is not pluralistic enough. Hick’s theology became popular in India with The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (Orbis, 1987), which he jointly edited with Paul Knitter and the rejoinder to it by Gavin D. Costa’s edited work, Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Orbis, 1990)..
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), who is considered as the "father" of the philosophical movement known as phenomenology, In his Logical Investigations argues that the best way to study the nature of propositional systems is to start with their linguistic manifestations.
Martin Heidegger in his classical work , Being and Time (Translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1953, original pub.1927)., emphasized language as the vehicle through which the question of being could be unfolded.
Thomas S. Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1st. ed., Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962.
Padmashri Prof. M. Anandakrishnan, "Interdisciplinary Approach to knowledge: An Ethical perspective," Key-note Address in the Department of Christian Studies, University of Madras, 22 July 2008 on the occasion of Festschrift Release Function in honour of Prof. Felix Wilfred).
David Hume , in his philosophical writings, took to showing how ordinary sentences about objects, causal relations, the self, etc., were semantically equivalent to sentences about one’s experiences and these have no objective value outside one’s own world view.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1989-1951) in his early work, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) argues that the world consists of independent, simple facts out of which complex ones are constructed. The role of language is simply to state facts by picturing them. Any attempt to find out meaning or relationship of facts by language is nonsensical. In his later work, Philosophical Investigations (posthumously published in 1953) he abandoned the earlier idea that there is in principle a perfect language and language is here seen as a set of social activities, each serving a different kind of purpose, and each language is "language game," governed by its own rules., true only within their own rules. There is no absolute truth beyond the rules of each language.
Hans-Georg Gadamer (1990-2002) was profoundly influenced by the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, In his most famous work, Truth and Method published in 1960 he rejected subjectivism and relativism as well as any simple notion of interpretive method. He grounded understanding in tradition mediated by language.
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) developed a strategy called deconstruction which challenges the Western philosophical textual and political traditions. It sought to expose and subvert the various binary oppositions that undergird our dominant ways of thinking. While the search of Descartes' was for a “firm and permanent foundation Derrida’s attempt was to deconstruct any such foundation of unified self ; he negotiated a divisible limit between oneself and ones self as an other. That is , in deconstruction, appearance is more valuable than essence, a reversal of Platonian essentialism. His theoretical frame work is present in his three works published in 1967: Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena.
George Lindbeck, developed a “cultural-linguistic” approach to theology based on the anthropological studies of Clifford Geertz and the “ language game” of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He wanted to correct what he called the traditional “cognitive-propositionalism,” which holds ecclesial doctrines as propositional truth claims, and modern “experiential-expressivism,” which considers doctrines to be non-discursive expressions of inward experiences or existential orientations. He rejects the attempts of Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan to combine these two traditional approaches . His postliberal theology conceives theology as grammar following Wittgenstein, that enables him to validate the truth claims of different religious traditions as true for themselves accordance with their grammar. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984) contains his basic arguments for developing a postmodern approach to theology.
William C. Placher , Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989 .
Mark Heim, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995.
Mark Heim, “Salvations: A More Pluralistic Hypothesis,” Modern Theology y (10:4 October 1994).