ABSTRACT
According to religious pluralism, the profound differences among the chief objects of adoration in the great religious traditions are largely due to the different ways in which a single transcendent reality is experienced and conceived in human life. The most prominent developer and defender of religious pluralism in the twentieth century is John Hick. Hick uses the expression ‘the Real’ to designate the transcendent reality ‘authentically experienced in terms of different sets of human concepts’, as the different gods and impersonal absolutes belonging to the major religious traditions. And in developing his theory of religious pluralism he relies rather heavily on the Kantian distinction between the Real as it is in itself and the Real as it is experienced and conceived by us. According to Hick, exclusivists and inclusivists agree in holding that a particular one of the world’s religions is the one true religion.
