Saturday 14 March 2009

The Pluralist Paradigm

2 The Pluralist Paradigm

(a)John Hick’s Pluralist Approach

John Hicks adopts the pluralist view. According to John Hicks, God is the centre and that all religions serve and revolve around Him. Hicks theological argument is based on the affirmation of the universal salvific will of God. ‘We say as Christians that God is the God of universal love, that he is the Creator and Father of all mankind, that he wills the ultimate good and salvation of all men’.
Hick asks whether such a God could have ‘ordained that men must be saved in such a way that only a small minority can in fact receive this salvation? His answer is ‘No’. It is precisely the doctrine of a God of universal love that dictates Hick’s answer.
The theological argument of the universal salvific will of God is a fundamental principle of the pluralist approach. Hick has been criticized by many theologians for abandoning the central Christian truth of the incarnation of Jesus Christ as the only to salvation and subverting the distinctiveness of Christianity.

The trust of Hick’s argument is twofold. First, ‘New Testament scholarship has shown how fragmentary and ambiguous are the data available to us’, so much so that he has called Jesus ‘the largely unknown man of Nazareth’. Hence, there is not enough historical evidence on which to base a claim for the divinity of Jesus and such evidence as there is, shows that the historical Jesus did not make for himself the claims that the Church was later to make for him.
According to Hick, the attitude of Christians to other religions need not be characterised by mistrust, desire to convert or superiority, but a will to learn and grow together towards the truth.

(b)Osofo Komfo Damuah’s Pluralist Approach

Komfo Damuah began his Christian ministry as Roman Catholic priest. He furthered his education in United States. Twenty five years after his ordination as a Roman Catholic priest he left the Catholic Church and founded the Afrikania Mission and took the name of Osofo Okomfo (fetish priest) Kwabena Damuah. While in the Roman Catholic ministry he did his PhD at Howard University and wrote on the topic ‘The changing perspective of Wasa Amanfi traditional religion in contemporary Africa’.

The focus for Damuah’s study was his own people group in the Wasa Amanfi, which he came to consider as a statement of divine self-disclosure through the traditional religion.Damuah also linked his study to the modern Africa search for independence from the Colonial rule. He proposed five key statements for Africa independence:
The profundity of Traditional African Religion and how it pervades every aspect of traditional Africa;
1.How this characteristic is ingrained even today in the twentieth century non-Westernised African
2.How Christianity and Islam do not seem to satisfy adequately Africa’s quest for identity and self-determination
1How a reconstructed Traditional African Religion may be considered as a likely answer to Africa’s search for freedom and self-determination
(3)That Traditional African Religion can exist in its own right on equal terms with other religions within an ecumenical framework.
The most important part of his thesis was the last chapter ‘The Search for a New Synthesis’. He states what he considered to be the problem:
The conflict over the meaning of being African runs through all African life today – religion, the arts and popular culture and education – so that it is in these areas that many of the crucial struggles over Africa’s future in the world are being decided. When it comes to religious values, contemporary Africa is the battleground of four contending forces:
Traditional Religion, Christianity, Islam and religiously indifferent materialism. The traditional religions seem to be everywhere in decline, … There is no attempt to capitalise on any specific traditional religion. Nowhere in Africa is there anything parallel to the organised pressures for a return to Hindu theocracy found in India, State Shinto in Japan.

Having isolated traditional religion as the most crucial index of the critical state of African societies, Damuah then sought to show how both Christianity and Islam do not seem to satisfy adequately Africa’s search for identity and self-determination. Damuah’s new synthesis is a reconstruction of the traditional religion, which he affirmed as being within the divine purpose for Africa and for the world. He states that:
The time has come when the African intellectual must take a new look and help resuscitate Traditional African Religion so that she can take her rightful place in the struggle for liberation and self-determination. The fact that she has been able to survive despite the encroachment of Christianity and Islam is an indication that there is something in the tradition, which God wants, preserved.
The Afrikania mission that Damuah established seeks to be a ‘universal’ religion from Africa and from African tradition, reaching to the wider world with universal vocation. It is traditional African religion with the aim of fulfilling the dream of the new Africa. ‘It is Africa’s religion of today’s generation, but it is open to all, irrespective of race, creed, colour or ideological orientation’.
The most fundamental challenge of Damuah and Afrikania to Christianity in Africa is the issue of identity, the problem of the identity of Christian Africa. Damuah sums up the challenge Afrikania poses to Christianity in Africa in his own words:
Mental bondage is mental violence
Religious bondage is invisible violence
Cultural bondage is cultural suicide
The time for liberation (is) now.


3.2.3 Inclusive Paradigm
Inclusive Paradigm affirms the salvific presence of God in non-Christian religions while still maintaining that Christ is the definitive and authoritative revelation of God.
Karl Rahner’s Inclusivist Approach
Rahner maintains that salvation comes only through faith in God through Christ and again argues the salvific presence of God in non- Christian religions. To hold the two principles in balance he argues that:
When we have to keep in mind both principles together, namely the necessity of Christian faith and the universal salvific will of God’s love and omnipotence, we can only reconcile them by saying that somehow all men must be capable of being members of the Church; and this capacity must not be understood merely in the sense of an abstract and purely logical possibility, but as a real and historically concrete one.1

Rahner gives four thesis to explain his position:
1.Christianity understands itself as the absolute religion, intended for all men, which cannot recognise any other religion beside itself as of equal right. Rahner adds a statement to this thesis by saying, the fact that Christianity understands itself as the absolute religion must be balanced by the difficulties involved in discerning ‘when the existentially real demand is made by the absolute religion in its historically tangible form.’2
2.The universal salvific will of God revealed in Christ can be experienced by non-Christian religions. He argues that God must somehow offer grace to all those who have never properly encountered the Gospel. The grace of God must be made available through and not despite the non-Christian’s religion
3.A non-Christian may have already accepted God’s grace in the depths of his or her heart by doing good. If a non- Christian has responded positively to God’s grace, through selfless love for another, then even though it is not known objectively, that person has accepted the God that is historically and definitively revealed in Christ. God’s salvation cannot be divorced from Christ; hence the term ‘anonymous Christian’ is more appropriate than ‘anonymous theist’.
4.The church cannot be seen as an elite community of those who are saved as opposed to the mass of unredeemed non-Christian humanity. The church is a tangible sign of the faith, hope and love made visible, present and irreversible in Christ. The Inclusive approach affirms that the only possible normative truth basis for Christians is Christ, while accommodating the salvific experience in non-Christian religions. The inclusivist challenges the pluralist removal of Christ and his church from the centre of the universe of faiths and those exclusivist who sever the relationship between Christ and other faiths.

3.3 The Lordship of Jesus Christ and Religious Pluralism
The Lordship of Christ is one of the central affirmation of the New Testament, the manner in which it was expressed was developed in the West where religious pluralism was not a big issue. Those of us Africans whose history, tradition, culture, and social relationship are different from those in the West do not find it easy to bear this burden of this heritage. This means that the involvement of African Christians in pluralist communities should be taken serious. The divine-human encounter in Jesus Christ is the basis for this confession.
The obvious mark of a Christian is the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord (2Cor. 4:5; Rom. 10:9; Col. 2:6 etc). It signifies a new relationship of the believer to Jesus Christ, of commitment and loyalty, of surrendering oneself to God and to the one Lord, Jesus Christ. It is an affirmation that by virtue of his death and resurrection Jesus Christ has been exalted above all lords.
There are three main points in the New Testament that can help in understanding the Lordship of Jesus Christ in the context of religious pluralism. The first is the connection between the confession of Christ’s Lordship and faith in his resurrection. The second is the relation between the exaltation of Jesus Christ as Lord and his humility, his suffering, his emptying himself, his servant hood. The third is the unique combination of the fatherhood of God with the Lordship of Jesus Christ.3 This leads us to a major question as to how Christians can witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ as they live with neighbours of other faiths. Christians should witness to the Lordship of Jesus Christ by proclaiming the salvation of Jesus Christ and actively involve in the struggle for justice. Christians should also share with neighbours of other faith that in Jesus Christ the Ultimate has become intimate with humanity, “that nowhere else is the victory over suffering and death manifested so decisively as in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”4

4. African Christianity and Afrikania Movement
Christianity is universal; the particularity of African Christianity should provide a contribution to the universal church. This contribution will defuse the Afrikania claim that what Africa needs is African Traditional Religion as an alternate to Christianity. The following statements of Komfo Damuah confirm the challenge the movement poses to the Church. His fundamental problem with Christianity in Africa lies in what he said:
Christianity is generally viewed by Africans as not indigenously African, but rather a white man’s religion, because as in other ‘pagan’ areas of the world, Christian missionaries often opposed or denigrated traditional local customs and institutions: veneration of ancestors, traditional tribal ceremonies and authority systems, and polygamy…5

Damuah proposed a solution to the problem of what he called the great dilemma facing Africans today’ by calling for a ‘new synthesis’ a reconstruction of the traditional religion which he considers as the divine purpose for Africa and for the world. He mentions in the Afrikania handbook what the movement wants to achieve.
It is not a new religion. It is a traditional African Religion ‘come alive’, reformed and updated. Afrikania is here not to destroy but to fulfil the dream of a new Africa. It is Africa’s religion of today’s generation, but it is open to all, irrespective of race, creed, colour or ideological orientation.6

Perhaps the most fundamental challenge Afrikania poses to Christianity in Africa is the question of cultural identity: the question of Ghanaian Christian identity. Bediako has raised the following questions that need further research. Have churches in Africa especially the mainline churches, adequately indigenous the Christian gospel by making full use of the potential elements of faith rooted in our traditional religions?

Christianity and Islam: With particular reference to Shariah Law

Shariah or Islamic Law which has become a a big challenge to the world especially in some countries in Africa especially in Nigeria. The system of law that governed a flourishing Islamic society for centuries has become a backward practice of endorsing corporal punishment. The traditional practice of Islamic law has been overshadowed by extreme interpretations.
Shariah is founded on three sources: the Quran, traditions and guidance of the scholars in authority.

Extreme Shariah: Extremism in Islam constitutes a total disregard for the principles of inclusiveness inherent in the faith.
1.The Punishment for Theft: The punishment for theft is the amputation of the hand.
2.The Punishment for Adultery: The punishment for adultery is death by stoning.
3.Death Penalty: Many countries choose not to endorse the death penalty, and even among those that do, its application is tempered by rules.

Extremist Hegemony: Extremist leaders attempting to create a puritanical overnight, disregard the practical aspects inherent in Islamic law, and ignore the fundamentals of human nature and societal conditioning. They put themselves in a position where they must try and overpower man’s resistance by brute force in order to institute their system of governance. Extreme leaders exert tremendous effort to prevent Muslims from living under a democratic system. They aim to prevent the spread of democracy because it will cancel their hegemony.

In the year 2000 eleven Northern states in Nigeria re-Islamised their legal system. The penal codes have adopted most of the provisions and added new provisions on the Quranic offences like: Theft, Unlawful Sexual Intercourse, Robbery, Defamation, Drinking Alcohol. The fixed punishment for unlawful sexual intercourse are stoning to death for persons who are currently married or have ever contracted a valid marriage. For those who have never contracted a marriage, the punishment is one hundred lashes and in addition, banishment for men. Theft is to be punished by amputation of the right hand. Robbery is punished by death if a life has been taken, by death by crucifixion if both lives and property have been taken, by amputation of both the right hand and the left foot if only property has been taken, and by banishment if there was only a “hold up” without further aggravation. Drinking alcohol are both punishable with eighty lashes.

Faith, Tradition and Modernity

God has made us and we are in relationship with God whether we recognise it or not. The Bible speaks of humankind as God’s image, as being unique and communal, and as having an identity which is derived and not autonomous. The chief end of human existence is and will be always to serve God and enjoy him forever in both our personal and communal lives. There is an immerse confusion when we try to interrelate faith, tradition and modernity. Our priorities creates problems when God is left out of the game. The image of God is marred and tarnished. Of ourselves we are powerless, alienated fragmented, fearful. What makes a Christian anthropology good news, is the message that Jesus Christ, the incarnate word of God, came to share our humanity and to redeem it through the cross. Our wholeness depends on the quality of relationship with God.

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