The beginning of pluralism

Stimulated by a discussion about doubt with a friend I have been re-reading the chapter Doubt in Karl Barth's Evangelical Theology: an introduction. It is really stimulating and helpful. But this post is just to note how I was intrigued with the following claim:

doubt can also have its cause in the community that encircles the theologian, in the feebleness, disunity, and perhaps even the perverseness of the form and proclamation of his own familiar Church. The great crisis of Christian faith, as well as of Christian theology, that arose in the seventeenth century did not have its primary basis in the rise of modern science, for instance, or of the absolute state which later also became religiously indifferent. According to the illuminating hypothesis of Emmanuel Hirsch, this crisis arose prior to all such shocks, simply in the painfully confusing fact of the stable juxtaposition and opposition of three different churches. Sealed officially and demonstratively in the Peace of Westphalia, these three different confessions each represented exclusive claims to revelation which relativized the claims of each. Subsequent acquaintance with the great non-Christian religions of the Near and Far East underlined this relativity still more painfully.