Truth vs. Pluralism

I believe in the eternality, universality and Truth that is God. I will demonstrate that this conviction will meet each of the ten criteria laid out in Christopher Morse's "Not Every Spirit." The first of the so-called “Ten C’s” that I will apply is continuity with the apostolic tradition. The three components of my statement are congruent with the apostolic tradition because it operates under both understandings of tradition. First, all three components are ‘handed down’ to Christians from history through the creeds, e.g. The Apostles Creed, The Nicene Creed and the Gregorian Creed of 594. Second all three components demonstrate the freedom of Christianity and point to the eternal salvation that the Christ represents. This freedom is eternal, universal and the truth as found in the Gospels. The second ‘C’ is congruence with scripture. My components in the statement meet the criterion for congruence with scripture as seen in the context of 1 Timothy 2:6 where the author shows the universal redeeming aspect of the Christ, “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men.” The third ‘C’ is consistency with worship; these components meet this criterion for two reasons. One, all three components have a history of usage in worship throughout the history of the Church. From St. Augustine to St. Thomas, all Christendom for centuries used liturgies that spoke of the three components of God, e.g. the Liturgy of the Hours. Second all three components of God are ‘preachable,’ as the universality of Christ’s redemption must be preached to all people.
The fourth ‘C’ is catholicity; this criterion is self evident given the components. The universality, eternality and truth of God are catholic, they by definition “extend everywhere, always, and upon all.” The fifth ‘C’ is consonance with experience, which the three components of God adhere to. All Christians experience the universality, eternality, and truth through our awareness of the redemptive power of Christ. Christians separated by class; society, geography, time and space experience together this universal power. This experience solidifies the body of Christ in all ages, giving us the experience of universality, eternality and truth of God. The sixth ‘C’ is conformity with conscience, which the components meet because the “outcome of the statement never leads to anything that is contrary to God’s Word.” This also allows for a freedom of conscience for people to determine their own understanding and even reject the Word of God. Because God is eternal, universal, and the truth all people have the ability to understand God, yet this triad also allows for people to use their conscience to reject God, as we are not born with the knowledge of God, it must be an acquired knowledge. The seventh ‘C’ is consequence, the statement meets this criterion because consequence implies future and the future of all three components is God itself. God is universal, eternal, and the truth and as a logical consequence God will always be universal, eternal and the truth. The material, created world will one day end as all causes except the first cause must at one point reach an end. When this occurs there will only be the triad God, as a consequence this allows for the freedom of humanity on Earth, but the ultimate victory of Christ.
The eighth ‘C’ is cruciality; the triad statement meets this criterion because cruciality implies that the doctrine must be crucial for both the short and long term consequences. The short term and long term cruciality of the statement implies that a Christian must always be both recognizing the eternality of God with knowledge that will be an end, yet also be aware of the present and be attentive to the universality and truth in our current time. This means the Christian must stand for the truth of God both now and forever. The ninth ‘C’ is coherence, the statement meets this criterion because it meets both an ‘internal coherence’ and an ‘external coherence.’ The internal coherence is demonstrated as follows: if God is eternal God must also be universal as whatever is eternal must apply to all time and space and what is universal, because it applies to all time and space, must also be eternal. Truth may be defined as a congruence with ‘the way things really are.’ Because ‘the way things really are’ must by definition be something in all time and space, if it is something that really is, then it adheres to both eternality and universality. The statement is also externally coherent as other disciplines and philosophies rely on the eternality, universality and truth of God. This is most notable in the work of philosophers up to the modern period. However, if a modern and postmodern is to adhere to the principle of the ‘universality of nature’ that all science is predicated on; it is adhering to the triad, namely something eternal, universal and truthful. In this way the statement meets the criterion of coherence. The final and tenth ‘C’ is comprehensiveness, which my statement meets because it meets the standards of dogmatic evaluations and critiques, as well as adds to current global matters. It contains presuppositions that all disciplines share, namely a basic belief in universality. Science, philosophy, psychology, and other fields rely on the universality of their principals; this triad statement gives validity to the vast array of current academic disciplines.

Thus religious pluralism is incongruent with Christianity.