Hermeneutic approaches to religious diversity take seriously both the deep divergences between different religious traditions and the idea that diverse religions’ claims to truth should be taken seriously.

Drawing on the work of Heidegger, Ricoeur, and especially Gadamer, advocates of what may be termed “hermeneutical pluralism” attempt to understand interreligious encounters according to the models provided by textual interpretation and interpersonal conversation.

Gadamer argues that a text makes a demand on the interpreter in that it presents itself as holding claims to truth that can only be adequately judged, affirmed, or denied after a careful reading in which the interpreter, to some extent, adopts the same questions as those that the text itself addresses (2002, p. 369).

Similarly, one must acknowledge in another person the possibility of her knowing and speaking truth if one is to be able to engage in any meaningful conversation. In both cases, the relationship between the interpreter and the interpreted is asymmetrical: the truth claims of the person or text to be interpreted (and the questions to which they relate) should be understood as the measure against which  interpretations are judged.

It is this focus on interpretation as a model for understanding that gives this approach the designation “hermeneutical.” And it is the claim that an effective understanding of a text, person, or tradition depends on being open to the possibility of truth outside a familiar tradition or worldview and on  being able to place my own position not only on par with but even “below” that of the other  that makes this approach a pluralist one.

Gadamer uses the term “horizon” to designate the position from which the interpreter approaches the text (or other object of interpretation). One’s horizon is constituted by one’s present conceptual environment as well as the history that has shaped this present and the particular ways in which one is open to future possibilities.

Thus, one’s horizon includes all presuppositions that one brings into new encounters, presuppositions that one can recognise but never completely escape (2002, p. 302). The work of interpretation involves engaging with an other whose horizon is different, sometimes drastically so, from one’s own. Openness to others does not rest on attaining an objective point of view free from prejudices; this sort of abandonment of one’s own horizon would be impossible. Instead, the openness that Gadamer advocates is a willingness to let our presuppositions and perspectives alter as a result of an interpretive or dialogical encounter, a process he calls the fusion of horizons.

In the application of hermeneutic philosophy to religious diversity, religious traditions or their texts are taken as representative of different horizons. The issue, then, is how to join these horizons effectively, and what the resulting new horizon will look like.

First, one can make the argument that if one has even rudimentary knowledge of a tradition beside one’s own, then the fusion of horizons has already begun. Any relation between two or more religious traditions means that at some point the respective horizons of the different traditions overlap. The task would then be to map out these overlaps by way of discourse with members of different traditions or interpretation of their religious texts. For example, insofar as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions share a common set of basic theological concepts (for example, strict monotheism) or scriptural figures (for example, Adam, Noah, and Abraham), these commonalities could be and often are used as frameworks for interreligious dialogue in the present. In the process of interpretation and discourse, relations could be extended and new points of contact developed, so that a more extensive fusion of religious horizons can be achieved.

Since the term “horizon” signifies one’s present perspective one’s criteria for the judgment of truth claims (including one’s own) are shaped by one’s current horizon. Therefore, openness to an encounter with another tradition from which a new horizon might emerge entails openness not only to the revision of specific presuppositions but also to the possibility of reassessing one’s criteria for judgment.

Interpretation or dialogue across different religious traditions would then include openness both to the possibility that the other’s traditions contain elements of truth not available within one’s own tradition and to the possibility that engagement with such truth might affect one’s understanding of truth in general. Depending on the hermeneutical approach taken and the arguments on which it is based, perspectives that advocate such dialogue are often correctly characterised as pluralist (though more inclusivist positions are not ruled out).

Advocacy of this openness to the revisability of basic epistemological criteria is based on the assumption that present standards of judgment are always subject to adjustment  in the future. This assumption goes along with the claim that there is in principle no end to the hermeneutic process; interpretation is continually producing new understandings of its objects and new horizons (that is, new contexts of understanding) that can subsequently become starting points for future attempts at dialogue and expansions of mutual understanding between different perspectives.

Since hermeneutics denies the possibility of objective access to truth, or truth that is free from a particular perspective, every mutual understanding achieved by diverse religious traditions will necessarily be provisional and subject to later reinvestigation. This is, however, not to be considered an unfortunate limitation but rather an opportunity for further constructive engagement. Only in particular historical encounters can new horizons of understanding and experience be forged; the hermeneutical philosopher of religious pluralism seeks out new possibilities for dialogue through which to partly reappraise the merit of former interpretations.

Regarding the question of whether or not diverse claims and interpretations point beyond themselves to a higher universal truth, the hermeneutical approach to pluralism may lead to different conclusions. One possibility would affirm that there is such a universal truth, resulting in pluralism not unlike that of Hick.

This seems to be the approach that follows most closely from Gadamer’s claims about the nature of language, insofar as he maintains that the diversity of languages nevertheless expresses a basic universal relationship to the world. One could then say that all of the various religious traditions, and the diversity of representations of reality found within them, express the same ultimate truth from their different horizons. On the other hand, it is also possible to argue on Gadamerian grounds that what is productive and valuable in interreligious discourse is precisely the encounter with the other as other, and that appeals to a higher unity undermine this.

According to this view, when beliefs and practices belonging to different traditions seem to refer to different ultimate realities, it may be preferable either to hold that they really do so or to avoid the question of a possible transcendent unity of religious truth entirely. The former position makes the issue of ongoing interpretation and judgment of conflicting truth claims particularly significant, while the latter is sometimes more pragmatic but also potentially less productive. Merold Westphal, for example, argues against something like the latter view, claiming that it precludes meaningful dialogue with religious others by eliminating even the possibility of cognitive conflict (1999, p. 3). His defense of a modest form of theological exclusivism that has been uncoupled from political and cultural imperialism may serve as a helpful point of contact between analytic and continental approaches to religious diversity, especially insofar as he advocates the consideration of epistemological issues and of the cognitive content of belief claims in addressing the ethical concerns at the root of many forms of pluralism.

source http://www.iep.utm.edu/rel-plur/#SH4a