Table Of ContentReligious Truth and Identity in an
Age of Plurality
This book deals with the intellectual aspects of having diverse religious
expressions in proximity and the socio-political consequences. It provides
a multi-disciplinary perspective on this complex subject, cross-fertilizing
work on religious plurality with truth-claims from theologians as well as
philosophers from the continental and analytic traditions.
The book includes three major parts. Part 1 explores the ideas around
religious diversity and truth; Part 2 draws out the epistemic import of reli-
gious diversity; and Part 3 concludes the volume by examining the practical
and social aspects of religious diversity.
Bringing a transdisciplinary perspective to a topic that remains at the
forefront of conversation around the religious life of the world, this book
will be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Theology and the
Philosophy of Religion.
Peter Jonkers is Professor of Philosophy in the School of Catholic Theology
at Tilburg University, the Netherlands.
Oliver J. Wiertz is Professor of Epistemology and Philosophy of Religion
at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen, Frankfurt,
Germany.
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Religious Truth and Identity in an Age of Plurality
Peter Jonkers and Oliver J. Wiertz
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Religious Truth and Identity
in an Age of Plurality
Edited by Peter Jonkers and
Oliver J. Wiertz
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Peter Jonkers and Oliver J.
Wiertz; individual chapters, the contributors.
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
General introduction 1
PETER JONKERS AND OLIVER J. WIERTZ
PART I
Religious diversity and truth 27
1 Introduction to Part I: the truth-aptness of religious
discourse and the problem of realism in relation to religious
diversity and pluralism 29
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
2 Truth, suffering and religious diversity: a pragmatist
perspective 41
SAMI PIHLSTRÖM
3 Truth, meaning and interreligious understanding 61
ÅKE WAHLBERG
4 Belief as an artefact: implications for religious diversity 75
ELENA KALMYKOVA
5 Maimonides and Kierkegaard on fictionalism, divine
hiddenness and the scope for interreligious dialogue 94
NEHAMA VERBIN
vi Contents
PART II
Epistemic consequences of religious diversity 113
6 Introduction to Part II: the epistemic consequences of
religious diversity 115
KATHERINE DORMANDY AND OLIVER J. WIERTZ
7 The epistemic implications of religious diversity 127
JOHN COTTINGHAM
8 Epistemic desiderata and religious plurality 142
OLIVER J. WIERTZ
9 “In abundance of counsellors there is victory”: reasoning
about public policy from a religious worldview 162
KATHERINE DORMANDY
10 Respecting religious otherness as otherness versus
exclusivism and religious pluralism: towards a robust
interreligious dialogue 182
DIRK-MARTIN GRUBE
PART III
Practical questions concerning religious diversity 201
11 Introduction to Part III: practical questions concerning
religious diversity 203
VICTORIA S. HARRISON
12 Christians and the practice of Zen 210
ALEXANDER LÖFFLER SJ
13 Reconsidering the concept of mission in the light of
comparative theology 229
KLAUS VON STOSCH
14 How to break the ill-fated bond between religious truth
and violence 246
PETER JONKERS
Contents vii
15 Can religious diversity help with the problem of religiously
motivated violence? 264
VICTORIA S. HARRISON
List of contributors 281
Index of names 283
Index of subjects 287
Acknowledgements
The present volume is the result of an international research project on reli-
gious truth and diversity. The members of the group, consisting of philoso-
phers, theologians and religious scientists, met several times between 2015
and 2017 at the Philosophisch-Theologische Hochschule Sankt Georgen in
Frankfurt/Main.
These meetings were made possible by a grant from the John Templeton
Foundation. We are deeply grateful for this generous financial support. It
goes without saying that the ideas expressed in this volume are those of their
respective authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the John
Templeton Foundation.
We also want to express our gratitude to the Philosophisch-Theologische
Hochschule Sankt Georgen and its staff for their hospitality. They saw to it
that our meetings always took place in an enjoyable environment.
We also owe words of thanks to Routledge and, especially, to Joshua
Wells and Yuga Harini for their support in bringing this book to publication.
Finally, we want to thank the contributors to this volume. Together, they
brought about inspiring discussions and a concentrated and friendly atmos-
phere during our meetings. They also made editing this volume a joyful
duty. We owe special thanks to Åke Wahlberg who acted as the “secretary”
of our group and also supplied the index.
The Editors
General introduction
Peter Jonkers and Oliver J. Wiertz
The overall aim of this book is to discuss the profound theoretical and
practical effects of the rise of (religious) plurality for the traditional idea of
religious truth, and their impact on socio-cultural identity. The main per-
spective of this volume is a philosophical one, but it is also fully alive to the
theological, societal and empirical aspects of this topic. In this introduction,
we want to give an initial idea of the multiple connections between the three
key terms, viz., religious truth, plurality and socio-cultural identity. First,
these terms will be placed in a broader, societal context, since it is important
to know why they have become the subject of a vivid public debate and
a matter of concern to many people. Hence, it comes as no surprise that
these terms are also cutting-edge topics in contemporary theology, religious
studies and philosophy of religion. In order to illustrate this, we will pre-
sent, in the second section, an overview of the main topics in the ongoing
discussion of religious diversity in these disciplines and link them to the
ways in which these questions are discussed in this volume. Given that the
focus of this volume is on different aspects of religious diversity, it has to
be noted that contemporary philosophy itself uses different approaches to
discuss this question, commonly characterized as continental and analytical.
Section three discusses this division and how this volume intends to deal
with it in a constructive way. The final section pays attention to the strong
theistic, Christian focus of the philosophical dealings with religious diver-
sity hitherto, and to the relation between philosophy of religion, theology
and religious studies. It is the hope of the contributors to this volume that
these insights may inspire theologians and philosophers of religion with a
non-Christian background to develop their own ideas on religious truth and
identity in a context of plurality.
Religious truth, plurality and cultural identity
The main reason for the fact that concerns over religious truth have been
mounting over the last decades has to do with the (potentially) exclusivist
implications of this idea for other religions and secular worldviews and the
fateful consequences for their peaceful coexistence. What has exacerbated
