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Truth or Truths—How Does This Fit in a World of Religious Plurality?

When invited to lecture, give talks, or present a paper on interreligious dialogue, one runs almost as if by design into one issue: the interrelationship between the question of truth, our faithclaims, the faithclaims of others, and how to deal with religious plurality. If you are right, people say, then we must be wrong. If you are right, if you provide space theologically for other faiths, then we must be wrong— our teaching, the basis of our faith and belief, the very foundation of our salvation must be wrong. Bishop Krister Stendahl, a SwedishAmerican theologian and New Testament scholar, once expressed this tension in the form of a question: “How can I sing my song of praise of Jesus without offending the other?” Christians want to praise Jesus, and praising him means saying that he is the Savior; he is the only one, and there is no other next to him, not only for themselves but for everyone. This is where the problem begins: The praise of Jesus seems to say that other ways of faith and praise are not valid ways. Stendahl said that praise of Jesus should not be understood to exclude the experiences of other relationships. Praise of Jesus belongs in the same category as love expressed between two human beings. Love language, or caressive language as Stendahl called it, is and remains an expression of a relationship between two persons in love with each other. It is a declaration, a proclamation, an announcement, an embrace of two people in love. It is a particular language. Blaise Pascal’s words are helpful for our understanding: “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît pas” (We know the truth,