[This is a copy of a letter sent to the Church of Scotland magazine, Life and Work in November 2003. It was in response to an article in the November edition by Professor Andrew McGowan of the Highland Theological College]

Not only does Professor McGowan’s article of November 2003 unduly restrict the religious alternatives to ‘exclusivism’ and ‘pluralism’, and of course it would be odd for Christians to adhere to the latter, but he appears to construct the exclusivist option in terms that many have rightly struggled with in the churches when encountering the richness of religious traditions outwith the Christian communities’ own. While the rich tapestry of real encounters with those of other faiths may well disrupt the ease of this kind of exclusivist talk, it does not follow that a theology of God in Christ’s finality consequently also has to slip.

What does have to go, though – and this is a point made by numerous Christian theologians about the nature of the very Gospel itself – is the claim that the Truth is identifiable with our perspective; and that nothing other people do or say can lead us into deeper and even painfully self-critical reflection on that truth. Dialogue may well not be a good word in this context (it has pluralist connotations), and conversation may serve better. People in conversation may learn a great deal, and may even shift their perspectives, but they remain particularly both who they are and committed to their own concreteness. That recognition can open a way of confessing the universality of Jesus Christ, but it cannot allow for a (fore)closing of our understanding of what that means finally, or of what it does to people who appear to resist that message.

Anyway, is it always the message that is rejected or the message brought by these particular messengers? So when we are rejected are we entitled to present the eternal endurance of the one rejecting as hellish [as Prof. McGowan implies]? The driver of our mission is surely a sense of gratitude long before it is a fear of hell (whether for us or for others). There are even good reasons for supposing that the loss of zeal in mission has been in large part the reaction to the manner of the zeal of churches whose mission impresses itself as arrogant and untrustworthy.

John C. McDowell (Dr.)