From Statements to Parables: Rethinking Pluralist Identities

Abstract

The author observes that, while pluralist theologians and philosophers of religion have made claims asserting an identical, transcendent reality referred to by world religions, they have not noticed the fundamental problem facing such claims. Necessarily, abstract terms such as “reality” and “thing,” of which the claims have need, lack criteria of sameness; and a term such as “identical” or “same,” unlike descriptive expressions such as “wise” and “good,” cannot be extended by analogy so as to remedy the lack. The claims are therefore empty. Apt parables would do better at expressing what the claims try to say.