Religious Pluralism and the Upanishads: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

One typical but currently out of favor response (among academics at least) to doctrinal differences separating religions has been to
reduce the welter of contrary doctrinal formations to an essential teaching, a kind of “superdoctrine,” such as “All religions are true,” or “All religions point to the Absolute.” But inclusivistic generalizations of this sort inevitably prove unacceptable because of their alienness to adherents of particular bodies of religious teaching. Another response, one favored by many scholars in the field of theology of religions in the last two decades, has been for the defenders of distinctive bodies of religious teaching to retreat into fideistic, inclusivistic, or confessionalistic assertions of the favored tradition and to give up the quest for commonalities between religions. But this usually means surrendering the quest to discover the common intention or intentions that link religions, as well as surrendering the quest to discover a platform that can serve as a common religious defense against antireligious attempts to negate the intellectual basis for religion in general.