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Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World (06)
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Paul Jang
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2008-12-03 14:43:21, hit : 3,176 |
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2. Inclusivism (Clark Pinnock)
(1) Salvation is universally available, but is established by and leads to Christ.
(2) Salvation encompasses all cultures. Of course, here is curious twist.
(3) Gender-inclusive language refuses to affirm that either male or female is intrinsically superior to the other.
(4) Christian inclusivists affirm that Jesus Christ is the normative fulfillment of all religion. But inclusivism hides a normative truth claim.
(5) It rejects the propitiatory (conciliatory) view of Christ's atoning work. Furthermore, while Jesus Christ is the clearest expression of God's universal grace, is he also the one who establishes God's grace by his unique work in his life, death, and resurrection?
(*) One of the most challenging issues facing contemporary theology is how to relate God's will to religious pluralism.
(6) It believes that God's grace is at work in some way among the people, possibly even in the sphere of religious life (inference) because God is present in the whole world (premise).
(7) The premise seems theologically well founded: If the Triune God is present everywhere, grace must be present everywhere too.
(8) The inference is more controversial, though they think it only draw out what is inherent in the premise.
(9) Inclusivisms runs a risk of suspicion in suggesting that non-Christian religions may be not only the means of a natural knowledge of God, but also the locale of God's grace given to the world because of Christ.
(10) Cautious inclusivism does not glorify (beautify) religions, as though there were not depths of darkness, deception, and bondage in them.
(11) Cautious inclusivism stops short of stating that the religions themselves as such are vehicles of salvation.
(12) There are several appeals of inclusivism:
1) First, hope attracts and inclusivism engenders hope. Christians want to believe that grace will prove stronger than sin in the flow of history.
2) Second, inclusivism relieves us of those dark feature of the tradition that suggest that (at worst) God plays favorites or (at best) inexplicably restricts his grace, so that whole groups are excluded from any possibility of salvation. More and more Christians are refusing to believe these notions.
3) Third, inclusivism appeals because of its honest willingness to acknowledge sanctity in person and religions other than Christian. Too many of us have encountered saintly persons of other faiths to deny that the religious communities behind them are in a state of some openness to God.
4) Fourth, inclusivism offers a more coherent version of orthodoxy. It affirms the universality of God's salvific will more coherently than exclusivism because of its acknowledgement of the universal prevenience of divine grace.
(13) Inclusivism offers the reader a middle ground between exclusivism and pluralism, holding both to the particularity of salvation through Christ and to the universal scope of God's plan to save sinners.
(14) Inclusivism implies a new relationship between Christianity and other religions, if God is preveniently at work among the people. It emphasizes that we must not continue to walk the path of superiority and chauvinism. It calls for a generous openness to the possibility of God's gracious presence there.
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Introduction
Theology 