Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth by Howard A. Netland (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 723 tremely incisive judgments on a range of modern writers and tendencies . What is outstandingly useful here is the way Dupuis shows how the most conservative of high Christologies can also he the most open and critically fruitful in engaging with other religions. The final chapters contain a fine exegesis of Vatican II and postconciliar documents regarding the confused and fluid status of interreligious dialogue in relation to evangelization and mission. Dupuis promotes the view of dialogue as mutual evangelization and as essential to the mission of the church, although there is slight ambivalence in his comments that dialogue does not involve explicit proclamation (228). Why not, in some instances? While Dupuis's hook is an excellent statement of an orthodox inclusivist high Christology, there are certain weaknesses within his approach . First, the clash of faiths and the fragmented discontinuities so clearly evident are too easily harmonized in an evolutionary picture of salvation history. Second, his Christology could he more trinitarian and ecclesiocentric. For example, he neglects the apophatic elements of Christianity and its possible relation with traditions like Buddhism, and while he denies any real difference between eastern and western pneumatologies , his own preference for the western tradition could have been more starkly contrasted with some dangers that have entered the debate by those trying to utilize an allegedly more eastern pneumatology. His ecclesiocentric neglect diverts attention from the way in which communities are so deeply shaped by their practice of texts and the consequent difficulties of comparison across different textual world views. Such problems should not however obscure Dupuis' incisive and powerful vision of Christ at the center of all salvation history. University of Bristol Bristol, England GAVIN D'COSTA Dissonant Voices: Religious Pluralism and the Question of Truth. By HOWARD A. NETLAND. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991. xii + 323 pp. $17.95 (paper). This hook, written by an assistant professor of religious studies at Tokyo Christian University who is also an Evangelical Free Church missionary in Japan, contains a lucid and coherent argument in defense of Christian exclusivism. Its author values clarity and reasoned argument over sentiment, and has faith in the power of those virtues to solve deep problems, such as those set for Christians by the facts of 724 BOOK REVIEWS religious pluralism. This faith has enabled him to produce a book of considerable power; it has also led him at points to oversimplify exceedingly complex problems. This is scarcely surprising since oversimplification is a perennial temptation for those who value clarity. Netland understands Christian exclusivism to assert at least the following claims: that the "defining beliefs" of Christianity-nowhere listed, but defined formally as that set of beliefs whose acceptance is entailed for any individual just by being an "active Christian in good standing "-are all true; that the defining beliefs of non-Christian religious communities are false where they conflict with those of Christianity ; that salvation is to be had only through hearing and properly responding to the gospel of Jesus Christ; and that evangelization-the active proclamation of the gospel to those who have not yet accepted it-is an unavoidable duty for faithful Christians. Netland further thinks that Christian exclusivism, understood in this way, requires and rests upon a high christology and a strong view of the truth and divine inspiration of the biblical text. None of these positions is uncontroversial, as Netland recognizes, and the cluster of views that he calls Christian exclusivism has long been out of favor in the mainstream of Christian theological thought, both Catholic and Protestant. It carries conviction, indeed, only among evangelical Protestants and small cadres of unreconstructed pre-Vatican II Roman Catholics. Netland thinks Christian exclusivism deserves a wider hearing, and that it should finally be adopted by all Christians as the proper way to think about religious pluralism. He therefore needs to meet the standard objections to the position, and this book is largely an extended attempt to do so. In the first five chapters Netland meets objections which, if successful , would make both Christian and other varieties of religious exclusivism untenable. If the arguments in these chapters are successful they establish only the modal claim that Christian exclusivism is possibly...