Creating Confusion: A Response to Markham

Extract

Ian Markham makes two basic contentions in his article ‘Creating options: Shattering the “exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist” paradigm’. The first is that the threefold paradigm of approaches to the question of salvation outside explicit Christianity are flawed and therefore unhelpful. The second is that his own tentative proposal further indicates this point, for his own position does not fit neatly into any of the three approaches. I think that Markham’s arguments for his first contention are not entirely convincing and therefore his own proposal fails to fit the categories, not because it has created a new option, but because it leaves certain questions unanswered and introduces a certain amount of confusion. In fact I will suggest that the usefulness of the three categories of exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism allows us to see more clearly what type of questions he leaves unanswered and thereby justify themselves heuristically in providing a basis for criticising those who question their viability. This brief reply has as its main purpose to defend the threefold paradigm in the theology of religions.

This is not to say that these three categories are problem-free. It is simply the case that a sustained and convincing critique of them is yet to be produced. I agree with Markham that Michael Barnes develops a sophisticated Trinitarian inclusivism despite his claim to break the paradigm. Kenneth Surin’s critique of the paradigm is of an altogether different nature. Surin seems to redescribe the terrain so that there are no valid theological questions left, only political-sociological questions.