Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Christ, part 48.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Some of the arguments for religious pluralism are almost textbook examples of logical fallacies, really weak arguments.

But just because these arguments are pretty unimpressive, don't think that religious pluralism

is not a significant threat today for Christian belief.

On the contrary, I think that religious pluralism does present an extremely serious challenge to Christian belief.

But by clearing away these fallacious arguments, we can get to the real issue that lies beneath the surface.

The real issue, I think, raised by religious pluralism, is the fate of unbelievers who lie

outside of one's particular religious tradition.

Christian particularism consigns such persons to hell, and pluralists simply find that unconscionable.

Nowhere is this problem better illustrated than in the life of my own doctoral mentor, John Hick, at the University of Birmingham.

Professor Hick began his career as a relatively conservative theologian. His first book was entitled, Christianity at the center, and that's where he thought it belonged.

But as he began to study other world religions and to become acquainted with many of their saintly followers,

he found it simply inconceivable that such good people could be on their way to hell.

Now, he realized what that meant. Somehow, he had to get Jesus Christ out of the center. But so long as one affirmed Christ's incarnation and atoning death,

Christ could not be successfully marginalized. And so Hick came to edit a book entitled

The Myth of God Incarnate, in which he argues that these central Christian doctrines,

like the incarnation and atoning death of Christ, are not true, but are mere myths.

He wrote as follows,

the problem which has come to the surface in the encounter of Christianity with the other world religions is this.

If Jesus was literally God incarnate, and if it is by his death alone that men can be saved and by their response to him alone that they can appropriate that salvation,

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