No, We're Not All Describing the Elephant

There is a common metaphor used by inclusivists that picture a bunch of blindfolded people feeling an elephant in a dark room and then describing it. One feels the tail and says the elephant is a tail. The other feels the trunk and thinks the elephant is a trunk. One feels the ear and thinks of the elephant that way.

This is supposed to provide an analogy to our views of God/reality. However, there are multiple problems with this idea.

1. The claims of the nature of God/reality by various religions are not merely different but complementary, but different and contradictory. Nothing is more obvious to that fact than placing the two dominant religions of our culture side by side, namely, Christianity and the inclusivist religion of the Enlightenment/Post-Enlightenment era. In Christianity, God is exclusively to be known through special revelation, He is just and filled with wrath upon the unjust, which, according to His revelation, is everyone, and reconciliation to Him can only be found in Christ. There is a hell; there is exclusion; there are two humanities, etc. In inclusivism, none of this is true. It isn't just different. It rejects all of this by saying that God loves everyone regardless of their religion, or at least the pious of any religion, he can be known through many religions, there is no hell, or at least not for the pious of any religion or worldview, there are good people apart from those redeemed by the reception of the gospel of Christ, there is one humanity, etc.

2. The biggest difference, however, is the fact that the means of knowledge of God/reality itself is either God-centered or man-centered. In Christianity, for instance, the Bible is God's revelation to men about Himself, about what He has done, and about what humans must do to be restored to Him. In Inclusivism, however, the Bible is man's experiential thoughts about God. It can be right and wrong about God, and in some circles (Neo-Orthodox ones in particular) it only becomes the Word of God when it agrees with our experience. That is a very man-centered understanding of revelation, and it essentially makes revelation worthless, as the judge of all things is the individual or collective humanity that is just feeling the elephant and guessing through experience what God/the nature of reality might be like.

Hence, the real problem with this idea is not that some are feeling the tail and concluding that it is a tail or others the trunk and concluding that it is a trunk, but that some are feeling the trunk and thinking it to be a snake, or the tail and thinking it to be a worm. The ear, a stingray, and the tusk, a smooth rock. This is a case where if one concludes wrongly about one part, he will conclude wrongly about the whole.

Furthermore, even if one were to conclude rightly about the part, the whole is needed to determine the nature of God/reality. A part of reality cannot comment upon the whole of its nature, nor even the individual part. This is because if one does not know how the part fits into the whole, the part is also likely to be either misidentified and misunderstood in its own nature and function. Imagine one feeling a part of a boat and not knowing what a boat is or how it functions. The part felt would be completely misidentified as something else or misunderstood as to how it functions. A part must be balanced in understanding to the whole.

Hence, if one identifies God as loving, but not as just, or if he has a false definition of love and justice, he will misidentify the nature of God. If one identifies reality as that which is empirically discoverable, but there is an element that is not empirically discoverable, he will conclude that all of reality can be known through empirical means when, in fact, that would be a lie.

This is often put off by most men because they don't want to consider these questions due to the fact that it takes brainpower and a willingness to abandon ideas that allow them to believe and live as they please. And that is what this elephant analogy is really about: rebellion. It cannot be verified as true, and according to revelation given to us by God, i.e., the only way we can actually know God's nature and the nature of reality (or anything therefore), it isn't true. Inclusivists ignore the arguments that suggest the Christian understanding is correct and their narratives are man-made fantasies constructed to allow idolatrous lifestyles and beliefs. That this philosophy is merely a coverup for their rebellion against God remains to this day the real elephant in the room.