A Philosophy of Religious Pluralism

Abstract

It is necessary first to establish some terminology. In the ‘Western’ monotheisms (though all in fact originated in the middle east) we think of the ultimate reality as an infinite, eternal, all-powerful, all-good personal being. A personal being is a person: the distinction which some theologians have tried to draw between God as personal and God as a person is meaningless — what could a personal non-person be? God, then, is thought of as the infinite person or, in the case of Christianity, as a trinity of persons who are three in one and one in three. It would be possible to stretch the familiar term ‘God’ to refer to the Ultimate without specifying whether that reality is personal, impersonal or beyond the personal/impersonal distinction. But the word carries for us in the West so strongly personal a connotation that it is wiser at present to avoid it when intending the more open or generic meaning, as I mentioned earlier (p. 36). Terms commonly used are Ultimate Reality, the Ultimate, the Transcendent and, less commonly, the word that I have myself introduced, the Real. Since none of these has a privileged status I shall use them all, taking advantage of the stylistic flexibility this allows, though most often speaking of the Transcendent, with or without a capital T.