There Can't Be Just One True Religion

At a glance

Relevant Scripture

“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”

John 14:6 KJV

UECF.NET summary

This chapter takes on religious pluralism: the popular idea that no religion can claim to be objectively true without arrogance, and that sincere belief matters more than which god, if any, one believes in. Keller's first move is to point out that the pluralist position is not neutral — it is itself a specific, contestable claim about the nature of God and truth (something like "God is unknowable" or "all paths lead up the same mountain"), and most actual religions, including atheism, deny it. A view that says "no exclusive religious claim can be true" is, itself, an exclusive claim. Everyone, pluralists included, believes some things about ultimate reality are true and others false.

Keller also challenges the idea that all religions are basically the same wearing different cultural clothes. Buddhism's teaching that the self is an illusion to be dissolved, Islam's account of a single transcendent Allah who does not become incarnate, and Christianity's claim that God became a particular man, died, and rose again are not variations on one idea — they make rival, often contradictory claims about God, humanity, and salvation. Respecting other faiths means taking their actual, distinct claims seriously rather than flattening them into a lowest common denominator. On the charge that exclusive belief breeds violence, Keller points to the twentieth century's atheistic and secular regimes — which killed on a scale religious wars never matched — as evidence that the deeper cause of violence is human pride and the need to feel superior, something nonreligious ideologies supply just as easily as religious ones. He closes by noting that the Christian doctrine of grace — that we are accepted by God's unearned favor, not our own merit — actually undercuts the kind of superiority that fuels persecution: a believer secure in grace has less need to feel superior to anyone.

Main themes

• Truth claims are unavoidable — even relativism and pluralism make one.
• Genuine respect for other religions requires seeing their real differences, not erasing them.
• The root cause of religious violence is pride and self-righteousness, not strong conviction as such.
• Grace, rightly understood, humbles believers rather than making them feel superior.

Key ideas

• "All religions are equally true" cannot itself be religiously neutral; it takes a position most religions reject.
• Differences between major world religions on the nature of God, the self, and salvation are too deep to harmonize without distortion.
• Nonreligious ideologies (fascism, Stalinism, Maoism) produced enormous violence in the twentieth century, undermining the claim that religion uniquely causes conflict.
• A gospel of grace, rather than earned merit, is what allows firm belief to coexist with humility toward those who believe differently.

Important concepts

• Religious pluralism — The view that no single religion's truth claims are objectively more valid than another's — itself a contested position, not a neutral default.
• Exclusivism — The position that a religion's core claims are true and rule out contrary claims — a stance every worldview, including pluralism, takes on some question.
• Grace — Unearned favor from God, received rather than achieved — the Christian basis Keller offers for humility without abandoning conviction.

Related Bible references

• John 14:6
• Acts 4:12
• 1 Timothy 2:5
• Ephesians 2:8-9
• Micah 6:8

Practical Christian application

• Next time someone says "all religions teach the same thing," ask them to name one specific, concrete belief and compare what two different faiths actually teach about it.
• Examine whether your own confidence in Christ's uniqueness makes you feel superior to others — and if so, revisit the doctrine of grace.
• Pray for a Christlike combination of firm conviction and genuine love for neighbors who believe differently.

Questions for study