Journal of Ecumenical Studies, 46:2, Spring 2011 ________________ Ankur Barua (Hindu) has been a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy of St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, since 2007, where he teaches Indian and Western philosophy and Indian theo- ries of ethics. He holds a B.Sc. in physics from St. Stephen’s College, and both an M.A. and a Ph.D. (2005) in theology and religious studies from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He partici- pated in conferences in England on Hindu responses to Buddhist theories of the self and in India on religion and modernity, both in 2010. His publications include The Divine Body in History: A Com- parative Study of Time and Embodiment in the Theologies of St. Augustine and Ramanuja (Peter Lang, 2009), and articles in the Oxford Journal of Hindu Studies, the Journal of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, the International Journal of Hindu Studies, the Journal of Hindu- Christian Studies, Harvard Theological Review, and Religions of South Asia. 1 RELIGION VERSUS THE RELIGIONS: THE DIALECTIC OF DIVINE REALITY AND HUMAN RESPONSE IN KARL BARTH AND SARVEPALLI RADHAKRISHNAN Ankur Barua PRECIS In the current literature on religious pluralism, the Swiss theologian Karl Barth is usually classified as an “exclusivist” and the Indian philosopher S. Radhakrish- nan as a “pluralist.” I argue in this essay that both of their positions can be viewed more adequately as grounded in certain criterial assumptions about the nature of reality and the human response to it. Given that these foundational presuppositions are divergent, and in some ways sharply opposed, I discuss the question of the pos- sibility of interreligious dialogue across the boundaries of two such conflicting worldviews. Recent philosophical work on the question of religious diversity has re- volved around the pluralist hypothesis of John Hick, according to which the dif- ferent religious traditions of humanity are valid responses to the same trans- cendent Reality, and responses to Hick offered by defenders of mainline Chris- tian positions who have charged that his position suffers from certain inconsist- encies and ignores the presence of deep-seated conflict of truth-claims across these traditions. 1 Hick developed his views over the years against the standpoint of Christian exclusivism, which holds that Christianity is the only true faith, which implies, according to him, that many individuals will not attain the high- est end of human existence, namely, communion with the God of love. Roughly half a century before Hick, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan leveled a similar set of criticisms against Karl Barth, who is often regarded in the current literature as the paradigmatic example of an “exclusivist,” for making a sharp distinction between God’s self-disclosure in the Christian “Religion” and the world “religions.” Sharply criticizing Barth’s view that no reasoned justification ______________ 1 Gavin D’Costa, ed., Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, Faith Meets Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1990).