Harold Kasimow, Grinnell College

A number of prominent Christian theologians who have contemplated the issue of religious diversity speak of three major models for approaching it: exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist. Claiming that “diversity of religions is the will of God,” Abraham Joshua Heschel was certainly no exclusivist. But he also was neither a pluralist nor an inclusivist in the way these terms are commonly used by Christian theologians. Much like the Dalai Lama’s perspective on Buddhism vis-à-vis other religions, Heschel’s distinctive Jewish approach to religious diversity transcended the categories created by Christian scholars.