İsmail Yalçıntaş

The process of globalization and the rapid development of communication technologies have intensified interactions among different religious traditions, thereby rendering the problem of religious diversity one of the central issues of debate in contemporary philosophy of religion. In this context, the epistemic status of competing truth and salvation claims advanced by different religions is being re-examined within the frameworks of theological approaches such as religious pluralism, inclusivism, and exclusivism. This study aims to examine William Lane Craig’s approach to the problem of religious diversity and to analyze the philosophical and theological foundations upon which he seeks to justify Christianity’s claims to truth and salvation. Craig argues that the term religious exclusivism generates the impression that God deliberately and arbitrarily restricts salvation, and he therefore regards this concept as terminologically and theologically problematic. Such an implication, he maintains, is incompatible with God’s universal love and salvific will. For this reason, Craig prefers the term particularism instead of exclusivism. Nevertheless, despite this conceptual preference, the practical and doctrinal implications of his position remain exclusionary, insofar as salvation is claimed to be possible only within the framework of Christian belief and based on specific theological presuppositions. At the center of Craig’s Christian particularism lies the doctrine of the Trinity. According to him, Trinitarian belief constitutes the indispensable ontological foundation of Christian salvation, and any rejection or weakening of this doctrine fundamentally undermines the claim that salvation is mediated through Jesus. In this respect, Craig criticizes conceptions of God that emphasize divine unity and simplicity while rejecting the Trinity. He argues that such approaches give rise not only to the exclusion of non-Christian religious traditions but also to a form of intra-Christian exclusivism. Consequently, for Craig, the Trinity functions not merely as a doctrine concerning God’s inner life, but as a constitutive principle securing the ontological necessity of Christian soteriology. Craig grounds divine moral perfection in the concept of love, maintaining that God must be essentially all-loving. He attempts to justify this claim through a comparative analysis of Christian and Islamic conceptions of God. According to Craig, Qur’anic verses stating that God does not “love” certain individuals indicate that divine love in Islamic theology is not unconditional and universal, but rather contingent upon faith and moral conduct. From this perspective, Craig concludes that the Islamic conception of God fails to satisfy a love-centered criterion of moral perfection. These considerations are directly connected to another dimension of Craig’s religious particularism, namely the debate over whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. For Craig, the decisive issue is not the attribution of different names to God, but the adoption of fundamentally divergent ontological conceptions of the divine nature. Whereas Christian theology conceives of God as one essence in three persons within the framework of the Trinity, Islam understands God in terms of absolute oneness (tawḥīd), rejecting any form of internal distinction. Craig argues that this ontological divergence renders the claim that Christianity and Islam refer to the same God philosophically and theologically incoherent. Craig further maintains that questioning the divinity of Christ or denying that Christ is the sole means of salvation would fundamentally destabilize Christian soteriology. However, this article argues that Craig’s defense of the Trinity raises serious difficulties with respect to the metaphysical principles of classical theism. Tensions emerge concerning the doctrine of divine simplicity, the attribution of divine attributes to distinct Trinitarian persons, and the nature of the causal relationship between the Father and the Son. These issues are subjected to critical analysis in the present study. Craig attributes the limitation of salvation not to an exclusionary divine will, but to human freedom, and he appeals to possible-worlds theory to argue that divine justice and love can thereby be preserved. Nevertheless, the study contends that this approach relies primarily on theological assumptions rather than on independent rational justification. As a result, the adequacy of Craig’s Christian particularism in providing a sufficient epistemic foundation for its claim to absolute truth remains open to serious question. In conclusion, the article undertakes a critical analysis of Craig’s Christian particularism, offering an original contribution to contemporary debates on religious diversity.