Exclusivism, Pluralism, and Knowability
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Exclusivism is one of the core tenets of our faith. First comes a high view of scripture as absolute truth as the special revelation to us of God about both himself and all creation. Then, we come head on into exclusivism which, in both the Old and New Testaments, is so bound up with all of the core tenets of our faith and strongly, unequivocally stated and restated throughout all the Bible, that we must throw out basically the entire Biblical text if we want to insert pluralism. Also, pluralism is wholly and completely incompatible with the core Gospel message (salvation by grace through faith in the historically real God-Man Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, the perfect Paschal Lamb, the once and for all final sacrifice whereby we are justified through imputed righteousness based on His atoning work on the cross and given the promise of new life in Glory by His subsequent resurrection), so holding to pluralism would ruin any chance of a coherent faith even if exclusivism was not stated so often and so strongly. More fundamentally, there is only one reality at any distinct point in time. Therefore, there is only one truth that can describe that reality. That truth then allows and brings knowability, and makes knowability a slave to that inherent singleness, or exclusivity, of both reality and the truth we use to describe that reality that brings us the knowledge we can know. Pluralism subsumes multiple simultaneous truths, therefore multiple simultaneous realities, so even on its own is out before we even get to the Bible or the Gospel message. Also, of all the fundamental truth claims and worldviews, of religions that is, including the religion of secularism, that I have ever studied, Christianity is the only one that is not hollow, trite, goofy, laughable, evil, capricious, and even in the final analysis ultimately absurd. In the end, though given all the above to inform it, it is faith, it is trust, that must be and is the ultimate arbiter of our entire religion and all we truly can know absolutely.