Universalism: One Way of Many

As a budding apologist for the Christian faith, there is a range of positions that contrast with and challenge my own beliefs. Not too long ago, for example, I was privy to a series of ongoing debates between a fellow believer and a pair of skeptics who sought to discredit the idea of God entirely or relegate Him to an unnecessary hypothesis in a predominantly materialistic universe where spiritual faith is at best a necessary evolutionary adaptation (for all but those singularly enlightened persons like themselves). However, this past week has seen argumentation of a different sort. On this side of the debate are persons who have little or no qualms with supernatural claims or faith in general; hearing about the miraculous or about the power of faith in general incites in them no real tendency to doubt or seek to discredit, for they believe that all religious faiths are fundamentally the same, despite some negligible differences. This stance, sometimes called universalism as we shall define it here (for universalism can mean different things in different contexts), posits fundamental similarities amongst the pluralities of the world’s religions, effectively suggesting that faith is a purely subjective expression akin to art or music. Recently, an acquaintance of mine was asking me questions representative of this approach, seeking to uncover my thoughts about the universalist perspective. In particular, her questions centered around the second (essentially the stance of universalism) of three basic responses we posited in Anger Management and the Koran that all people everywhere take to religious pluralism. They are briefly summarized as follows:

We began our discussion there by noting that there is a wide range of beliefs and that different people are going to fall at different places along this spectrum, at times even being somewhat contradictory in their stated beliefs. However, we suggested that these three categories were useful distinctions that provided a sound hermeneutic with which to evaluate the respective beliefs of a given person: most people fit best into one of these overall categories to the virtual exclusion of the other two. From here, we sought to explicate a sort of character profile that fit these respective positions. The first position often starts with the categorical dismissal of God from the outset and thus sees all such claims about Him as necessarily false. (We might add here that if one’s issue was merely with the many faiths themselves and not with God/the gods per se, his stance would actually be best subsumed under the third category with the caveat that all currently existing faiths are false.) Further, we noted that such a stance does not necessarily mean that the person holding this view is antagonistic to those representative of the other two perspectives, simply that it reflects his basic overall personal beliefs about the world: religious faith is fundamentally false.

The second category includes those who believe that all religious beliefs are fundamentally the same and only superficially different. The world over, people hold the quest for spiritual truth in common and ask many of the same questions; all people share some sort of religious faith in common however different the particulars. There are, of course, those who hold to the first position (particularly in the West) and posit an atheistic answer, though there still exists the spiritual question underneath that facilitated the negative response. Our conclusion, then, was that the world over, people, at least, are fundamentally the same and only superficially different. But then we questioned whether or not it followed automatically that the religious faiths of all persons the world over were equally valid; we questioned whether we could accurately say that all religious claims were fundamentally the same and only superficially different.

The third position that we articulated was that not all faiths are true, not all faiths are false, but “some are plainly better than others.” That last proposition in particular prompted my acquaintance to ask what qualifies as “better,” for we were not very specific in our definition:

She also asked how one could separate out human persons from their respective beliefs, as we appear to have done. The deeper question is whether we can usefully or fairly distinguish between people on the one hand and their religious beliefs on the other. For if we say that people are fundamentally the same and only superficially different the world over, can we then fairly separate out that claim from a statement that their beliefs nonetheless have some fundamental, and not merely superficial, differences? Perhaps even more importantly, what do we mean by “fundamentally the same and only superficially different”? For our third position could be taken to task for merely citing “superficial differences” as a basis for distinguishing between the truth and falsity of religious faiths, and, if that were the case, the difference between the universalist (second position) and the third position would be negligible and we would have succeeded in saying very little that was useful or meaningful. All we would really accomplish by championing the third position of picking and choosing “truths” between faiths is to foster a spirit of intolerance that, rather than seeking an ecumenical reconciliation between all faiths, instead seeks to perpetuate division by citing “superficial differences”: by seeing mountains when there are really only molehills. It would not be that these differences of faith were so much bad or undesirable, rather it would be a case of being contentious about the minor matters rather than learning to embrace and celebrate what are essentially only superficial differences. The real question, then, is: “Are these ‘superficial differences’ truly relevant, and if they are not, would not the second position of universalism be the better approach?”

Specifically, she asks: “When one begins to dissect and contrast each religion tenet by tenet, the differences are often completely antithetical, in this I agree with you without reserve, however, this universal perspective shared by Gandhi, as well as numerous Asian, Greco-Roman, and modern philosophers is not gauging ‘the end’ by the means, and therefore it might seem that the vision of the forest, is somewhat lost among the various trees.” In the sentence before this one, she also asks: “If one posits that the ‘end’ of the divergent spiritual ‘means’ is a ‘blissful’ hereafter, then do not Christians and Muslims ultimately agree?” These questions are very useful starting points, for they suggest a wider scope than the one I put forth. In fact, she notes this factor by suggesting: “I feel that you are far too narrow in your argumentative scope.” It appears then, that what I mean by “superficial differences” is not nearly as broad as what she means when she reads the same term. In fact, in a follow-up note in which I attempted to answer her replies much like we will here, she narrows her real argument down to a central focus in which only “the end” is seen as important whereas “the means” are truly trivial. Thus, the argumentative scope of the third position of sorting and sifting between faiths would be too narrow, for it would be making a great deal out of very little.

As a practical starting basis, perhaps we should focus in on what we will attempt to do today in answering these objections. To begin with, we are not as concerned with discussing the various religions minutia by minutia—tenet by tenet—as we are by what they define as their own overarching end and the means they consider to be essential in reaching that end. That much strikes me as a fair beginning, for if we are to give full value and respect to the claims of another, he or she should be allowed to lay out his or her own terms in which he or she determines what is or is not important before we accept or reject these claims. Further, I would contend that in order to favor “the end” over “the means,” we have already made certain assumptions about what “the means” really are that allows us to adopt this position; I would also contend that these assumptions may run exactly contrary to the assumptions others hold: I would content that such assumptions, may, in fact, be guilty of not really listening to what others suggest is important because they hold themselves a predetermined conception of what is important and what is not. No one holds a position of any sort without it resting on underlying assumptions, and this includes the universalist. For me, it is not enough to consider whether Islam and Christianity, to use our example from Anger Management and the Koran, both seek a “blissful” hereafter—it is also important to consider what they themselves believe to be the essential means to that hereafter. To be sure, there is Protestant and Catholic, Shiite and Sunni, but we will treat each religious system as a whole, ruling out the minutia by minutia as negligible to our present discussion, for while we would never call Catholics (as a whole) Muslim or Shiites (as a whole) Christian, we think nothing of calling Catholics Christian or Shiites Muslim for that is what they are. Simply put, we are not making arbitrary distinctions between faiths but taking advantage of the lines already drawn for us.

Now then, when we make the claim that some faiths are plainly better than others, what do we mean by “plainly better”? What means, if any, is there for measuring “plainly better” in the midst of disagreement? And who are we to decide what is “plainly better” for another? Isn’t that rather arrogant? For the universalist, calling a given faith “plainly better” than another is at best misguided or meaningless and at worst a rather arrogant, “faithist” statement, for the universalist believes that spiritual faith is an entirely subjective expression akin to painting or playing music. To be entirely fair, perhaps there are more delicate ways to phrase the same idea than “plainly better,” but if for the sake of an argument we are willing to admit that it was not meant as a pejorative but as a stated premise, we will see that it too highlights the fundamental differences between the universalist assumptions versus those that are represented by the third perspective. As we will demonstrate in a moment, no one holds to any position without it resting on some underlying assumptions: these assumptions form their own “means” to that stated “end.”

What we are claiming when we suggest that some faiths are plainly better than others amounts ultimately not to personal preference—though perhaps there is merit in examining the fruit of a given faith (as we shall also see in a moment)—but that we do well to attempt to discern which, if any, contain objective truth about the nature of God and the cosmos. For example, if we are a universalist, a given religion that believed that faith was a subjective expression akin to art or music would be more objectively true than a faith claiming to possess objective, definitive answers. Why? Because the universalist has determined from the outset that all faiths are subjective. The universalist recognizes that the religion claiming to be objectively true in itself is entitled to its own opinions and that these are merely its subjective expression (whatever it might personally believe about the matter), but ultimately, if all faiths are truly subjective as is believed, such a faith does not really say anything objective about the world short of providing an example of subjective religious expression and assuming a pragmatic function in the structuring of society and the fulfillment of the individual. Before we carry this thought further, let’s look at classical philosophy for a moment to examine some of the ways in which objective truth has traditionally been determined; our goal here is to have a set of tools to look at the end and the essential means (whether stated or implicit) of any religious position, including that of the universalist. Of great help to us, Dr. Jonathan Dolhenty has written an excellent and succinct introduction to the basic assumptions of formal logic entitled Truth and Certainty, which we will borrow from rather than reinventing the wheel.

Classical philosophy posits the existence of three primary or self-evident truths. These include (1) the fact of our own existence, (2) the principle of contradiction (also called the “law of non-contradiction”), and (3) the belief that the mind can know and discover truth. The reason these truths are considered to be self-evident is because in order to deny them, one must employ them.

(1) If you claim that you do not exist, we may fairly ask you, “To whom, then, do we have the pleasure of speaking?” Simply put, one must first exist before he can claim that he does not exist.

(2) If one denies the law of contradiction, he is saying that his claim is true and that the rule is false. Think about that for a moment: he is saying that the law is false and that it is not true—he is not saying that the law is both true and false. Thus, he is unwittingly appealing to the very law he asserts is untrue to demonstrate that his claim is true: even in his denial of the law he affirms it.

(3) Finally, if one says that we can know nothing with our minds, how then is it that he knows this to be true? Is he trying to tell us that he is speaking mindlessly and knows nothing?

These three primary or self-evident truths become the building blocks for all further claims. Upon these three truths, classical realism rests three tests for truthfulness: (1) the correspondence theory, (2) the coherence theory, and (3) the pragmatic theory. The correspondence theory (1) says that a proposition is true if it accurately represents—or corresponds to—reality. The classic example is if I tell you that it is raining outside, you have but to go to the window to check. If it is raining, my proposition is true; if it is not raining, my proposition is false (however well intentioned I may have been). The coherence theory (2) asks if a given proposition accords with other known truth. Dolhenty uses the following example:

The pragmatic theory (3) asks the question: “Does something ‘work’?” If it does, it might very well be true. (This would correspond in part to “What kind of fruit do these various religions produce?”) However, this is hardly a failproof test for objective truth, for something may very well “work” but not be objectively true. An example that may work, however imperfect for our specific argument here, is the argument philosopher J.J.C. Smart makes in Philosophy and Scientific Realism. We should note that he is not trying to make our specific point: we are lifting his example here to prostitute for our own purposes. His hypothesis is intentionally preposterous and involves a metaphysical theory about “how we got here” (for he is attempting to show how the study of philosophy can help evaluate competing claims for which no empirical test could ever be devised):

J.J.C. Smart is not directly demonstrating the pragmatic theory for discerning truth, but his illustration may serve to help us understand how something may “work” and yet not be regarded as true. Based on other known or consensually accepted beliefs about the origins of the universe, very few people would believe this particular theory. In short, while this theory “works” in explaining the origins of the universe and is virtually impossible to refute on the basis of internal logic, it radically reinterprets other claims we hold to be true (every objection is met with “ten minutes ago, ten minutes ago, ten minutes ago”), for all intents and purposes failing the test of the coherence theory. It is much more probable to assume that the football match that we remember, the newspaper, the fossils, the photographs in the pocket, and the countless other objections we might raise are what they seem, not implanted memories and artifacts all of ten minutes in the making. In this case, we might even call in Ockham’s Razor, which posits that the simplest explanation that adequately accounts for all of the variables is probably the correct one (note the word “probably”: this is another question of probability or likelihood). Our conclusion, then, is that this theory is the weakest of the three in evaluating objective truth, because something may “work” and yet not be objectively true.

Now that we have laid out the truth-seeking tools of classical philosophy for our use, let us revisit this question of being able to separate out a person from what he or she believes, examine what might constitute “superficial differences,” and determine whether or not there is true compatibility between the second, universalist position and the third position which suggests that not all religions are true, not all religions are false, but some are plainly better—that is, more objectively true—than others. First off, let us decide in what ways we, as human beings, are fundamentally the same and only superficially different. We already listed a few of these in Anger Management and the Koran: “There are, to be sure, different cultures and different ways of conceiving the world, but at heart, we all feel pain, we all experience desire, we all ask the reason why, we seek answers to the unknown.” But let us take it a level deeper.

You and I did not ask to be born. We did not manufacture the world into which we emerged and none of us can claim to have all the answers in regard to it. From the earliest societies until this very moment, there has always been a spiritual questing common to all peoples, just as there has always been an artistic impulse and a search for meaning. The human race comes in a complementary set of male and female and the two must come together to create any of the single ones. Barring disease, injury, accident, or other external factor, all will grow old; without exception everyone will die: death is a specter that haunts us all. So far, so good, but how do any of our truth-seeking tools help us out here? Certainly we can say of ourselves: “I exist.” What is more, there are not many of us who are going to seriously question whether or not an external world exists, for like our other questions, we assume it even as we deny it, both because there would be no reason to deny such a thing if there was no one and nothing “out there” to care (or at least listen, and if not listen, at least hear) and secondly because we constantly act as if it exists, whether we claim to believe it or not: most of us sleep in a warm bed at night (or wish we had a warm bed in which to sleep), most of us get up in the morning and put on clothing (I assume that most of us have at least one change of clothes), most of us talk to at least a few other people throughout the week we presume exist, however inactive our social life and cursory our conversations. Therefore, we can safely say that most of us agree that there are at least two truths that accurately correspond to reality: (1) I exist, (2) a world outside of myself into which I was born also exists.

We also know that if something exists—if anything exists at all—it has either eternally existed or has come into existence from something else that existed before it until at some point we arrive at something that has existed eternally. Stipulating the concepts of “existence” and “non-existence” in their broadest sense to cover the totality of the cosmos and beyond, I would appeal to the law of contradiction here to support my claim: there cannot be both existence and non-existence. Existence might at a future time somehow be reduced to non-existence—it is at least hypothetically possible to go from something to nothing (though the first law of thermodynamics calls such a premise into question)—but it could never work the other way around: true non-existence—nothingness: the absence of all life and matter entire—could never produce existence—“somethingness.” How could it? To do so would be a contradiction of terms. But alas, we agreed that there is something, so we must conclude that has always been something. So let us examine this “something.”

Either the world has always existed or it was brought into existence by something else that has always existed (at least if we go far enough back along the chain of possible birthings from what was into what currently is). We have already stated this is the only logical conclusion, for to deny this is to violate the law of contradiction. If the universe as we know it has always existed then perhaps there is not much we can say about it. It would not answer to any higher law or any higher authority. It would simply exist, have always existed, and thus have eternally operated on its own rules. Such a condition might warrant the claim that all religions are ultimately subjective, for they would simply have existed along with everything else since the beginning of time. They would not answer to or correspond with anything “out there,” but would merely be expressions of what is “in here.” However, not many in the Western world accept the hypothesis that the world as we know it had no beginning, whether they be theistic or atheistic in their stance. Our scientists, theorists, philosophers, historians, theologians, and all the other voices that comprise our culture consistently tell us that the world as we know it had a beginning. Not everybody agrees as to exactly when that beginning took place or how, but nearly everybody agrees that it did.

Now then, if most of us agree that the world had a beginning, we agree that it came from something, whether a cosmic explosion or something else. Perhaps while the world as we know it did have a beginning, the “stuff”—“star stuff” as Carl Sagan might say—from which it emerged was itself timeless. Perhaps the material nature of this eternal “what is” reacted together in ways which, however unpredictably, resulted in the world in its present state. It may not be entirely clear how this happened and we may never be able to satisfactorily explain it, but all we have to do is look around us and see that something apparently happened if the world as we know it had a beginning. This position really isn’t so much different than the one above and there is also little we can say about the fact: matter reacted with matter, and we are its result. (Or, if you prefer, substitute either or both instances of “matter” in the preceding sentence with “energy” in keeping with Einstein’s theorem and we have framed a virtually identical claim.) Thus, religious faith could still be a purely subjective enterprise for it would not answer to anything higher than itself: it would not answer to anything “out there” for it would simply be another part of “in here” and as such would answer only to itself (for in this case, “in here” is simply a part of the only “out there” that exists).

This solution may well accord with Ockham’s Razor by offering us the simplest, most likely scenario, at least if we are satisfied that it adequately accounts for all the variables. After all, we exist—what is, is—do we really need to drag any other consideration(s) into the equation? Perhaps, perhaps not. But it might be an interesting exercise to ask ourselves how life can arise from non-life, or, if we really wish to ponder, ask ourselves what it means to be alive at all. Is the universe alive? Is it essentially “God” incarnated; is “God” essentially the universe personified? Do earth, air, fire, and water possess life? Are all things living parts of one cosmic whole? This, at least, is what animism, one of the oldest forms of pantheism, claims. Everything is alive; everything has a soul that is part of the larger “world-soul.” If everything is alive and everything is “God,” how is it then that I feel so separate from everything? Is the universe trying to “discover” itself through me, through my thoughts, through your thoughts? If everything is “God,” and “God” is everything, then certainly all religions are but manifestations of “God” and necessarily subjective in that they point to no higher truth than the following one: the “end” will proceed as it always has, for it is the very source of all the seemingly divergent “means.” (In fact, one could question whether or not talking about an “end” even makes sense in such an instance, for the “means” would simply be the perpetual emergence of the “is”: “the means” would be “the end”—and the beginning and middle too if you like.) There is no “in here” or “out there” ultimately and so there is no need to look to any greater objective truth than the reality of divergence. In this sense, then, “in here” is all there is.

Suppose, however, that we find it difficult to accept that life can come from non-life and suppose that we find animism an untenable answer to that problem. No, further: suppose, for the sake of our thought-experiment, that we somehow know that the universe is not animistic and that life cannot come from non-life. We will lay the following two tenets down as if they are objective truth (if in fact they are not) so that we can test them: (1) the universe was created, and (2) it was created by a living, sentient intelligence of some sort. How much allegiance, if any, do we owe to this proposed intelligence (or plurality of intelligences)? (For simplicity’s sake, we will henceforth refer to this prospect in the singular.) Certainly, we would not exist as we do in pairs of male and female if it were not for this intelligence who created us. So if we have any gratitude at all, we might do well to at least say thanks. Further, if this intelligence were very powerful, we might do well to pay homage to it for fear of some kind of retribution. But wouldn’t it make a difference whether this intelligence existed side-by-side with matter or whether this intelligence existed entirely apart from matter? For if this intelligence were part of the same ontological reality as matter, it would not have designed the rules of the universe; it would have been working within the constraints of a pre-existing “void.” So it hasn’t really “made” the rules at all, it has merely worked within those rules. What is more, it might cease to exist for some reason and yet what it set into motion would still continue to exist. So then, if we could somehow commit deicide and obliterate the life from this sentient intelligence, we would no longer be answerable to it in any fashion and would in nowise jeopardize our own existence: we would continue to live on even after this intelligence had died just as murderous children live on after committing the atrocities of patricide and matricide.

This then, is something like the ancient world of the Greek gods or the contemporary world of the Hindu pantheon. The gods could/can fall in love with the mortals—and sometimes did/do—and the mortals could/can be exalted to gods—and sometimes were/are. The philosophers of ancient Greece, however, thought that we could and ought to dispense with such nonsense. (Interestingly, many of the educated and intellectual in contemporary India do not believe in the Hindu pantheon either: they posit either a form of pantheism or a form of panentheism approaching monotheism—see Father John A. Hardon’s Hinduism under the heading “Basic religious principles.”) If the gods do exist, of what real value or help are they to us? They answer to the same laws we do. Further, there seemed to be a strong suspicion that a lot of this talk about the gods was just a subjective expression of some sort: at best, pragmatically useful, at worst, insidious: disruptive—even dangerous—to society. Was not it more important to find the rules by which the gods also had to live and abide? In fact, we find elements of this in Plato’s Republic, where Socrates is speaking with the young aristocrats who stand a good chance of becoming tyrant, or ruler, of Athens. (See What is Justice? A Socratic Dialog.) With the aid of Socrates, the young men are attempting to build the perfect city-state (or “republic,” hence the title of the book) in their mind, so that when they look at the real city-state of Athens in light of this mental ideal, hopefully the flaws and areas that need improving will be revealed by the contrast (or at least, that is a purported goal of the book, though one wonders if sly Socrates doesn’t have more up his sleeve). In this perfected city-state, only the handful of philosopher-kings rule and they find it useful to tell the people “noble lies”—essentially metaphysical myths—in order to ensure that the city-state operates at its greatest functionality. The philosopher-kings themselves would know the real truth, of course, for they understand the truth and laws of the universe, but the people would be graded from bronze and silver to gold, with only the “gold” children (ultimately those who showed particular promise) separated for training as future philosopher-kings. (Brave New World, anyone?) Is it any wonder that Socrates was essentially accused of atheism?

In any case, if we say that (1) the world was created, and (2) it was created by a living, sentient intelligence of some sort, we still have not shown decisively that there is any compelling reason why it would be necessary to view faith as any more than simply a subjective expression. What would happen, however, if there was a living, sentient intelligence that was utterly perfect in itself and that had no need of anything else? And what if through its agency, it created the world “from scratch”? (We are not here concerned with how long this creation process took or in what way it was enacted; we are concerned only with the concept of infinite Creator and finite creature.) Imagine if this Creator did not abide by any rules except for those that were consistent with its own character. Suppose that it alone existed—nothing else besides—and that it not only created the universe but sustains it in such a way that if it (the Creator) were somehow to cease to exist, the universe would likewise perish, but if the universe perished, it would continue to live on unabated. If you imagine all these things, you are imagining the God of monotheism. It is precisely the distinction between this God and the dependent gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon that Peter Kreeft has in mind in our previous two installments when he writes:

Notice Kreeft’s careful distinction? “[T]he Jews were discovered by the God who has them.” It is not uncommon for contemporary skeptics to ignore this important distinction and set up Plato’s question anew in regard to the monotheistic God, as Russ Shafer-Landau (University of Kansas) and Joel Feinberg (University of Arizona) do in the textbook Reason and Responsibility. We will not here laboriously re-create their argument and our subsequent refutation, for we have already done so in That Which Is and the Negation of Nature and interested persons can go there if they wish. Nevertheless, we might do well to include a portion of a paragraph for our purposes today:

Now then, let us draw back from this monotheistic God for a moment and ask ourselves a few questions. Would any of these views of how we came into existence make a difference if they were objectively true? Would we then be able to separate out the beliefs a person held from the person who held them? Or would distinguishing between these possibilities be a matter of making a scene over what are essentially “superficial differences”? Could we objectively ensure that all of these faiths produce the same basic end? Or do we have to make some assumptions about the “means” that would ensure such an “end”? Would any of these scenarios, if objectively true, warrant describing some beliefs as “plainly better” than others, or would such a claim simply be arrogant? You see, if we say that the ends of all religious faiths are pragmatic and utilitarian and one religion is not objectively better than another for all are subjective like poetry or music, we are resting that assumption on something we consider to be an objective fact. By focusing exclusively on the means in this way, we are suggesting that there is not a transcendent Creator God who has certain standards He expects the people of the earth to abide by. Not ultimately. For if there was ONE such God, it might matter a great deal what the means were and not all means would necessarily ensure the same desirable end. Further, we have been better than our word regarding “minutia by minutia” for we have not even gotten into the “means” that the given monotheistic faiths posit as essential (such as, for example, what it might mean if Christianity’s claims of sin, salvation, heaven, and hell were objectively true).

We can separate persons from their religions, because persons are biological facts of the universe. Persons of any nationality can intermarry with persons of any other nationality and produce children regardless of what any of them believes to be true about the world. But beliefs, by contrast, are either truer or falser depending on how well they correspond to objective reality. Some beliefs may not matter at all and truly be subjective, like what color of candles should appear in a given ceremony or whether or not incense is used. However, some religious beliefs purport revelation about things far graver than such minutiae and these beliefs cannot logically all be true—unless we can somehow show that they are only subjectively true in the minds of those who believe in them but have no real correspondence to external reality. If all religious beliefs are fundamentally the same and only superficially different, it must be because the objective reality is that no single, overarching reality exists short of the one comprised of the individual parts; the only true reality must consist only of the experiences of the individual minds. If, however, we suggest that all faiths are essentially true and we do believe that an overarching reality exists over and above the individual parts—namely the monotheistic God—we must necessarily believe that the objective truth is that He doesn’t mind the differences in perspective regarding Himself and/or is incredibly merciful and thus all will end well for everybody. While the various faiths might well serve utilitarian or pragmatic purposes in ordering and structuring society and giving meaning to the individual, if an external reality does exist beyond religious faiths, we might very well want to have some way of finding out what that reality is and assuring ourselves that He/She/It really does not mind these differences of belief and worship, for surely not all religious faiths accurately correspond to such an external reality if one actually exists. This sort of evaluation would not be a matter of arrogance or intolerance, but would simply be a desire to know and find the truth for oneself.

We can and should decide matters of faith for ourselves and in so doing this will almost certainly entail that we conclude that the faith of certain others is false. But is that automatically wrong or bad? Do we not do that sort of thing all the time, even in matters of opinion? Supposing you tell me that your father conceived you in his womb. I do not believe that your claim is true, but I do not have to mistreat you or persecute you because of it. Facetious examples aside, we do not have to agree with one another to respect one another’s differences. What is more, on a deeper level, how can we dialog intelligently if we do not commit ourselves to believing something? Dialog only works when there are genuine differences that require respect: that is what tolerance is all about in the first place. It is not blindly asserting that all claims are true. For example, my acquaintance seems to favor the universalist position. In so doing, she disagrees with me, because I do not. In other words, she has concluded my claims are, if not false, then at least irrelevant or poorly informed. We cannot both be correct about the matter, for I happen to think that my own claims are very relevant and that the universalist position is largely untenable. Yet while we may disagree until the day that we die, we do not have to be hateful or spiteful with one another. The simple fact is, we do have beliefs we hold to be true. And these beliefs shape the way in which we see everything else in our world.

As a student who hopes someday soon to be teaching college, I am well aware that I have an obligation to respect the beliefs of my students and I have no intention of being tyrannical about matters of faith. But at the least, I owe my students this much: to tell them the truth that even a universalist position says that some things are true about the world and that other things are not and we simply cannot have our cake and eat it too. Some of my best professors were up-front about their worldviews and two in particular stand out: a Marxist and an Orthodox Jew. I did not agree fully with either. And yet these were some of the best classes I had because there were far fewer hidden assumptions and knowing where we all stood, all could dialog intelligently and more effectively. Certainly, I can tell my students that I am a believer in Jesus Christ (and they can always find me here on the web if they wish to know more about my own beliefs—wink), but the key of being a Christian professor in a secular university is in giving students the respect to reason and think through matters of faith for themselves. My job is to provide them with tools to better equip them for this task: I am, as Dr. Robert Harris puts it, to be their “guide by the side.” I simply do not believe that the universalist position is the necessary or even desirable way of dealing with the reality of religious pluralism—unless, of course, we happen to really believe that this position is true (in which case we would be false to ourselves if we did not teach in this way).

Perhaps a huge complication in this whole discussion is that many people in our day have felt that in order to be tolerant to other people, it must be posited that there is no final truth, no objective reality. After all, if the truth cannot be proven, what good does it do for us to look for it? And further, maybe the reason this so-called truth cannot be proven is because there is no truth to be known. It might be such a thing that it really does not matter whether “truth” corresponds to objective reality at all, so long as it provides meaning and purpose to our lives. But is this true? French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) was an important pioneer in identifying, labeling, and shaping this cultural shift which we know best as postmodernity, however much we might have tired of that term by now. (Incidentally, we have previously cited Lyotard in The Antithesis of Existentialism; we have also attempted to point out both the benefits and the pitfalls of the postmodern position in the recent The Wise Man and The King: A Postmodern Parable.) The big complaint that he and other philosophers had was with “totalizing systems” or “master narratives.” The foundation we have established above as a means of qualifying objective truth claims was something that he and others ultimately rejected, but not without the self-contradictions we demonstrated that it is believed make these truths self-evident. As Andrew F. Uduigwomen writes in Philosophical Objections to the Knowability of Truth: Answering Postmodernism:

Archive note: See also the two threads on the discussion forum regarding this newsletter: Truth, etc. etc. and Universalism.

What Uduigwomen is arguing is the simple truth many of us have realized before: to the extremist of this persuasion, the only truth is that there is no truth (which violates the law of contradiction) and to suggest that “All total systems or master narratives should be rejected,” presupposes the fact that this claim is itself a total system or a master narrative. Further, why should we dismiss master narratives simply out of hand? Because Lyotard and others like him say so? Are we going to let such men think for us, dictate what is true and false when their own presuppositions are founded on logical contradictions? As Uduigwomen concludes: “[T]he postmodern view can be seen as another arbitrary social construction like other ideologies that it sets forth to debunk. We have, therefore, no compelling reason to accept the theory as tenable. We can simply dismiss it as the creative work of some extremely cynical people.” The simple fact is, we all have totalizing systems of some sort or another, whether we realize that fact or not and whether we would admit that fact or not. Tolerance can be a true virtue, but not at the expense of truth (at the least, the truth that no matter what we say, not one of us in practice believes that all approaches to life are equal: we deny that we believe this assertion by the very way we live our lives). If we call tolerance love but we care nothing for truth, we invariably come up with two fistfuls of air. If we care only about truth but have not love, we are but a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal—harsh, and abrasive. As George Grant and Mark Horne write, “It is the sad tendency of modern men to either do the right thing in the wrong way or to do the wrong thing in the right way. We either hold to the truth obnoxiously or we hold to a lie graciously. We are either a rude angel or a polite devil.” Let us then be polite angels who nevertheless challenge the self-contradictory claims of our day, standing for the truth: at the very least, standing for the truth that we all at least secretly believe that some ways really are better than others, even if it involves a lifetime of searching and seeking to root them out.

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