1 - Complementary Shards

Summary

The first part of the chapter offers three reasons for going beyond the three most common types of approach in exclusivism, pluralism or inclusivism (always seen as culminating in one’s own religion). These are the transformations of the modern world in which other faiths are now often one’s immediate neighbour; changing perceptions of the origins of the major faiths (in which the impact of specific contexts is fully acknowledged); and the need to reject over-simple explanations for religious phenomena, whether from believer or non-believer. The second part then presents the preferred model of revelation across the religions as rather like a beautiful but incomplete pattern only partially visible on broken pots. Taking the revelatory dimension seriously involves going beyond the ‘equalities’ of pluralism in two ways: entering sympathetically into the historical evolution of each of the religions and being prepared to identify where that religion might carry better or more profound truth than one’s own.