Exclusivity seems to harbour two fatal flaws, two flies in the religious ointment, one biblical and the other doctrinal.

The first is ignorance of the status of scripture. The Bible is a series of interpretations and re-interpretations of past insights. It is not a blue-print for either faith or morals. It is not a fixed revelation designed to be applied "straight” and unrevised to each changing situation. Observation of how the biblical writers re-shape, and often throw overboard, past revelations, shows that it is work in progress. The way the scriptures constantly point forward to something yet to be revealed shows that God's intention has always been for believers to continue the search under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The second is ignorance of the status of doctrine. Doctrine is the churches' on-going attempt to continue along the Bible's path of discovery. Like the scriptures from which it takes its lead, doctrine continually re-presents and re-shapes past revelations using the philosophical categories popular at the time. The "trinity” is a prime example, where the original biblical insights have been re-shaped to fit the neo-platonic categories popular in the third to sixth centuries. No wonder Mohammed (not an expert in neo-platonism) got the impression that Christians believed in three gods. We need to ask whether this "trinity” has overstayed its explanatory welcome, given that we no longer think in terms of "essences” or "natures” or "persons” in the neo-platonic sense. The same goes for "incarnation” and "atonement”. I have yet to meet a non-expert who can use any of these terms in a meaningful way beyond mere recital.

Exclusivism fails to recognise this exploratory process in the Christian pursuit of truth. Truth for Christians is an eschatological hope, not a list of definitions. Exclusivists, however, tend to look on the Bible as a set of celestial lecture notes, unchangeable and "normative” for all times and places without the need for radical interpretation. Conservative evangelicals are fond of referring to the Bible, in fine C S Lewis style, as "the maker's manual”: a collection of proof texts from which selected samples may be applied to current situations without adaptation or reflection. Of course, the selection is selective. Texts about divorce or love of money are seen nowadays as highly flexible, while those about homosexuality or women bishops (being minority concerns) are set in concrete. In the same way, exclusivism sees doctrine as a system of factual definitions (not interpretations) directly arising from scripture. The doctrines as they are adumbrated can then be read back into scripture, resulting in a magic circle of certainty.

This would all be laughable if it weren't so serious. I think we inclusivists have been fooling ourselves that, with a little patience, the extremists would come to their senses under the barrage of Rowanite sweet reasonableness. Events in USA and Uganda show how foolish and irresponsible we can be. Exclusivists are not playing games: they really do believe that they have a mission to save the world from the three abominations of secularism, pluralism, and relativism, which they see as co-terminous. And if history tells us anything at all it is that ideologues on a mission are dangerous. The two flies in the ointment are fast growing into an army of locusts.