To begin this review, a full disclosure is warranted: this book is a bold, full-throated apologia for what is called a pluralist theology of religions. And I'm a self-declared pluralist. Caveat lector! While endorsing its fundamental thesis, I will do my best to be appropriately careful and critical.

Kenneth Rose, who is director of religious studies at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, appears to be on a rescue mission: he hopes to rescue the theology of religions from the present impasse that he believes postliberal particularists (like George Lindbeck and Gavin D'Costa) have created. And he seeks to aid religious studies to recover its lost identity after having sold its birthright to “hegemonic scientism” (151). His central and unqualified claim is that apophatic pluralism offers “the only final truth” and “the only sound basis for a responsible theology of religions” (66, 68), as well as for an understanding of the nature of religion.

What he means by apophatic pluralism is contained in the two pillars on which it stands. First, the theological or philosophical pillar he believes is self-evident: the object or content of all religious experience and claims will always be in excess of what is experienced or claimed. Second, the empirical or historical pillar he calls “departicularization.” This is “the process whereby every religious tradition slowly unravels itself as it adapts to cultural change” (9). Thus, “no religious community can preserve its language against change and decay forever” (68). The sweeping conclusion is clear: Amid the historical plurality of religious traditions, there will be many ways to know and speak about “an encounter with being, or the divine” (7); but it is theologically and historically impossible for any one of them to be final or absolute over all the others.

Around this claim, Rose builds a line of defense against what every pluralist knows is the usual criticism from particularists. He calls it the “tu quoque” attack: apophatic pluralism is another form of exclusivism, this one a Western hegemonic imposition on all religions. Rose retorts: such critics fail to distinguish between “second-order critiques of language” (like the apophatic nature of all religious language) and “first-order substantive claims” (like extra ecclesiam nulla salus). More simply: to say that all paths between Berlin and Rome are limited is not another path between Berlin and Rome (3).

Rose strengthens his defense by reminding critics of pluralism that the apophatic recognition of the ineffability of the Divine or Ultimate Truth is not a Western imposition but a message heard in all religious traditions. He has an insightful chapter showing that Hinduism is “an unparalleled example of . . . apophatic pluralism” (89), and another chapter in which he makes his complex case that the New Testament, despite its number of well-known and overused exclusivistic texts, offers “the overlooked potential . . . for nonexclusivistic theologies of religions” (105).

So under the banner of apophaticism, Rose sounds the charge to challenge the “dominance of inclusivism as the default theology of religions” (26) and “the massive rejection of pluralism in mainstream theology of religions” (35). Christianity is at a “crossroads,” and it is time for it “to divest itself of its claims to religious sovereignty” (129–30). Rose also calls upon religious studies to “rouse itself from its particularistic slumbers,” not to abandon its “thick descriptions” of particular traditions but to have the courage for the “unashamedly essentialist” task of drawing universal conclusions, as long as such conclusions are humbled under the apophatic critique (158).

Rose would serve his call to deabsolutize religious claims better by being a little less absolute and more humble himself. He would do well to follow the thoroughly pluralistic advice he finds in Hinduism—that is, to recognize “the possibility that either inclusivism or exclusivism may be true and that pluralism may be false” (90). Also, in his frequent appeals to the apophatic “brilliant darkness beyond all expression” (145), how does he account for the evident contradictions between the cataphatic claims of religions?

For those who see pluralism as “the future of religion,” Rose's book will be a solid buttress. For those who don't, it is an argument that they will definitely have to contend with. It's sad, therefore, that the price of the book puts it beyond the reach of student textbook budgets.