CAPÍTULO C01 CUADROS DE PRECIOS

Inclusivist approaches to other religious traditions are considered by many as the offshoot of the exclusivist stance which still falls short of expectation in the pluralistic environment. In his article ‘The non-Absoluteness of God’ John Hick sets out to tear apart the exclusivist and even inclusivist doctrines of Christianity in order to address the superiority that Christianity has been undeservingly assuming over the centuries. Hick argues that available knowledge of other religions such as Judaism and Islam, Hinduism, Buddhuism, and Sikhism, Confucianism and Taoism and African primal religion have revealed immense spiritual riches comparable to Christianity (Hick, 1987:17). He further contends that every religious tradition contains within it valuable and harmful elements. Each is internally highly diverse, some of its aspects promoting human good and others damaging the human family. In the face of these complexities, Hick asserts that no religious tradition has contributed a more favourable balance of good and evil, than others (Hick, 1987:30).54

Invariably, critics of the inclusivist model such as Hick find unacceptable the various explanations given by both Christianity and Islam. They consider them attempts to grant a secondary authenticity to other religious traditions even though all cultural and religious traditions constitute different ‘lenses’ through which the divine Reality is differently perceived. For, all human awareness involves an indispensable contribution by the perceiver (Hick, 1983:83; 1989: 240,242). They take exception to the Christian inclusivist approach championed by Karl Rahner and Gerald McCool that non-Christian religions should not be accepted uncritically and placed on a par with Christianity. From the Christian point of view, non-Christian religions are the utterances of men, human ignorance, weakness, and malice which the Church, under the protection of the Holy Spirit has the responsibility to point out (McCool, 1975:214). In other words, a non- Christian religion contains elements of a natural knowledge of God mixed up with human depravity which is the result of original sin and later aberrations. It contains supernatural elements arising out of the grace which is given to men as

54 _{However, critics of the inclusivist approach do not consider the various religions as essential rivals. The} religious traditions began at different times and in different places, and each expanded outwards into the surrounding world of primitive natural religion until most of the world was drawn up into one or other of the great revealed faiths (Hick, 1973:137). Again, no religious community has produced higher quality of saintliness than any other religious community to claim the custody of a greater power than any of the other great world faiths (Hick, 1987:23-24). The other world religions have produced equally great saints, mystics and thinkers as Christianity has and it is wrong accord the only second grade in God plan of salvation. They have also been great sources of spiritual and moral life and the heart of cultures for centuries (Hick, 1983:78). The Christian societies are also bedevilled by social vices of high proportions (Hick, 1987:25).

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a gratuitous gift on account of Christ. For this reason non-Christian religions should be recognised as lawful religions without denying the error and depravity contained in them (McCool, 1975:215). The critics of inclusivist model also reject the Islamic inclusive view which considered the non-Muslim religions as having dissipated, lost, and tampered with the content of their revelation (Al-Faruqi, 1982:135). Though the universalism of prophecy follows from God’s transcendence, non-Muslims have lost the originality of their religion and moral teaching. They have semblance of divine revelations (Al-Faruqi, 1982:136).

The inclusivist theology is deemed by many as inadequate for the twentieth-century theology of religions in the light of the greatly expanded knowledge of the religious experience (Hick, 1983:77). It is still couched in and haunted by the traditional Roman Catholic doctrine, ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation’, and its Protestant missionary equivalent, ‘Outside Christianity there is no salvation’ (Hick, 1983:77). God’s saving activity is his gradual creating of ‘children of God’ out of human animals. Salvation consists in human beings becoming fully human, by fulfilling the God-given potentialities of their nature regardless of religious traditions. And this is not a sudden, all-or-nothing affair but a gradual growth, which indeed takes much longer than the span of our life on this earth. Salvation, then, is a slow and many-sided process (Hick, 1983:79).

To people like Hick the inclusivist theology of religions are mere attempts by theologians to acknowledge on the theological level the traditional exclusiveness, the conviction that there is salvation only through one religious tradition and on the historical and practical level, that salvation is in fact taking place outside Christianity (Hick, 1983:80). On the whole missionary endeavours have achieved little positive outcomes in the light of the fact that the great majority of people still hold on to the religion into which they were born (Hick, 1983:79). Between Christianity and Islam there have been little more than rather rare individual conversions. Even in Africa where both Christianity and Islam seem to be making inroads the greater part of the conversions have been from the adherents of traditional religion (Hick, 1973:138). Conversion from Christianity to Islam and Islam to Christianity has been insignificant despite the huge effort and time invested in the project.

In short, the inclusivist model presents one religion as authentic and its community the sacrosanct religious community. The one religion and its scripture become the measure of true religion and scripture of which all other religious traditions are deviations of the original religion. This inclusive position could itself be an obstacle to dialogue in that it still has some

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negative attitude to other religion. But there is nothing wrong in thinking one’s religion is better or more authentic than others.

4.4 TRADITIONAL AKAN RELIGIOUS VALUES AND THE RELATIONS OF