PLURALISM
(There is) a
perverse assumption now dominant among evangelicals that feelings, attitudes
and relationships are all more important than truth. Unity is a higher priority than
orthodoxy. Division, even for truth's
sake, becomes the most offensive of heresies.
World Magazine
"Tolerance"
gives me room to say, "I think you're wrong, but I'll defend your right to
be wrong." "Pluralism"
suggests, much more strongly than most folks admit, that there isn't such thing
as right and wrong - and no such thing as truth and error. As it is practiced more and more in America,
pluralism tends to require that you not only leave room for your neighbor to
believe what he believes, but that you also refrain from disagreeing with
it. There's a world of difference
between the two perspectives. Tolerance
promotes civility combined with clear thinking.
Pluralism promotes civility combined with mushy-headedness.
Joel Belz
World Magazine, November/December,
2001.
I'm planning
to be civil toward any of my neighbors who may be heading for the local
mosque. But in no way will I accept the
charge that to tell them of the truth of the gospel of Jesus is to jeopardize
the "pluralism" that has made America a great springboard of freedom
for so many generations. And no way
either will I concede the right - a right that has now become a duty - to tell
them that the error of their thinking is profound. I will do that not because I hate them, but
because I love them.
Joel Belz
World Magazine, November/December,
2001.
It has become
a commonplace to say that we live in a pluralistic society – not merely a
society which is in fact plural in the variety of cultures, religions and
lifestyles which it embraces, but pluralistic in the sense that this plurality
is celebrated as a thing to be approved and cherished.
Leslie Newbigin
The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society,
Eerdmans, 1989, p. 1.
We are not
simply a society in which we recognize the existence of, and the differences
between, a variety of religious beliefs, but one in which we declare all such beliefs
are to be equally valid. From that perspective there is only one kind of
heresy, namely, to claim that one view is ultimately right, where others are
wrong. In granting plausibility to everything, we may grant certainty to
nothing. Tolerance has been embraced at the expense of truth… To allow that
everyone and everything is right is to destroy the notion of truth itself.
Alistair Begg
Made
For His Pleasure, Moody Press, 1996, p. 124-125.
(Philosophical
pluralism) is the ideology that refuses to allow any single religion or
worldview to claim an exclusive hold on the truth. It denies that there are any absolutes. It insists that all religions and worldviews
must be seen as equally valid…To suggest otherwise is to be arrogant and
intolerant. No religion can claim to be
superior to any other. You may practice
your faith as long as you realize it is only one of many true faiths. If what you believe is true at all, it is
only relatively true…(But-) at the same time that philosophical pluralism
denies other religions the right to lay claim to the truth, it presents its own
worldview as the absolute truth…In the end philosophical pluralism’s dismissal
of dogma turns out to be just another dogma.
Philip Graham Ryken
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway,
1999, p. 16-17, 19.
Although
Christians cannot cherish religious pluralism, they must tolerate it…By
tolerance I mean allowing other people to hold and to defend their own
religious convictions. Tolerance does
not mean that everyone has to agree with everyone else. That would not be tolerance at all. The word tolerance itself assumes
disagreement, that there is something that must be tolerated. Tolerance thus applies to persons, but not to
their errors. It does not require me to
endorse your worldview. If you are not a
Christian, I do not endorse your worldview.
In the context of a friendship I will even try to talk you out of it…Yet
it carries out these arguments with humility and civility.
Philip Graham Ryken
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p.
29-30.
To believe
that two contradictory religions are both true is like saying, “2+2=4, or 5, or
37, or whatever you like.” To believe
all religions simultaneously is to become hopelessly entangled in
self-contradiction. One simply cannot
accept the Hindu belief that there are 3000,000 or more gods and at the same
time accept the Muslim belief that there is only one god. Nor can one embrace either Hinduism or Islam and
Buddhism because historic Buddhism does not believe in a personal God at
all. Or consider the religious opinions
about the afterlife. Shintoism
says there is no afterlife, just the here and now, so make the most of it. Buddhists seek Nirvana, the complete absence
of desire. Christianity teaches that
heaven is a place where all pure desires are satisfied in Jesus Christ (Rev.
22:4). Who is right? If there is a heaven at all, does it negate
or satisfy desire? Opinions about
judgment differ as well. Christianity
teaches that “man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment”
(Heb. 9:27). Hindus believe in a
seemingly endless series of reincarnations.
Well, which is it? Both views
cannot be true.
Philip Graham Ryken
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p. 34.
Religion is
not a preference. Although people are
allowed to hold their own opinions, they cannot make up their own truth. This cannot be done with religion any more
than it can be done with mathematics. To
insist that all religions are equally true is another way of saying that all
religions are equally false…If every religion is compatible with its opposite,
why bother with religion at all?
Philip Graham Ryken
Is Jesus the Only Way? Crossway, 1999, p.
34-35.
This
is the mantra of religious pluralists: Liberate your mind, lose your faith, and
feel the love.
Burk Parsons
Don’t
Be So Open-Minded, Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 2, Used by Permission.
There cannot be only one Mediator
between man and God. There must be many according to pluralists today. It is equally
a truism among pluralists that if there is one way to God, there must be many
ways to God, and certainly it cannot be accepted that there is only one way.
The exclusive claims of Christianity in terms of God, in terms of Christ, in
terms of salvation, cannot live in peaceful coexistence with pluralists.
R.C. Sproul
Twilight of the Idols, Tabletalk, June 2008,
p. 6, Used by Permission.
Built into our law system is the idea
of the equal toleration under the law of all religions. It is a short step in
people’s thinking from equal toleration under the law to equal validity. The
principle that all religions should be treated equally under the law and have
equal rights does not carry with it the necessary inference that therefore all
religions are valid. Even a cursory, comparative examination of the world’s
religions reveals points of radical contradiction among them, and unless one is
prepared to affirm the equal truth of contradictories, one must not be able to
embrace this fallacious assumption.
R.C. Sproul
Twilight of the Idols, Tabletalk, June 2008,
p. 7, Used by Permission.
Indeed, it’s a misnomer to call
[pluralism] a system, because it is the idea of a consistent, coherent view of
truth that is unacceptable to the pluralist.
R.C. Sproul
Twilight of the Idols, Tabletalk, June 2008,
p. 7, Used by Permission.
Given that [the] major religions hold
vastly different ideas of God, the human predicament, and the deity of Jesus
Christ, a committed believer in any of these creeds could never find it
acceptable even to imply that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all serve the same
God.
Robert Rothwell
A Brave New World,
Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 11, Used by Permission.
Help the religious pluralist see that
he does not really believe that all roads lead to heaven. If he did, then he
would not express outrage at suicide bombings, human sacrifice, and other such
practices that even staunch religious pluralists find abhorrent. One cannot
consistently embrace religious pluralism and relativism and at the same time
object to any religious belief or practice. If sincerity is all that matters
for salvation, religious terrorists who sincerely believe their god calls them
to kill others do nothing wrong when they obey him. To condemn even one
religious belief is to appeal to some ultimate, normative standard by which we
may evaluate religion, establishing that standard as the one, true religion –
and there can be no one, true religion for the honest religious pluralist.
Robert Rothwell
A Brave New World,
Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 13, Used by Permission.
[Unbelievers] will not affirm the
lordship of Christ over them because they fear that Christ will reign over them.
We are fearful of affirming the lordship of Christ over all things, including
our neighbors, because we are afraid of our neighbors ruling over us. Pluralism
is a half-hearted attempt at a compromise of convenience – we won’t condemn you
if you won’t condemn us. We won’t say you are wrong, if you won’t say that we
are wrong. We won’t find your views backwards and repugnant, if you won’t find
our views backwards and repugnant. What a deal? And all it costs us is the
central and first affirmation of our own faith: Jesus is Lord. All we have to
give up to win peace with our neighbors is the proclamation of the Gospel.
R.C. Sproul Jr.
Kiss
the Son, Tabletalk, June 2008, p. 80-81, Used by Permission.
|
Today’s
postmodernists use cultural pluralism as a pretext for relativism, as if the
existence of many cultures implied the existence of many truths. |
Gene Edward Veith
A Good Kind of Pluralism, Tabletalk, June
2008, p. 82, Used by Permission.
One
of (the) chief and excruciatingly ironic effects (of the ideology of
pluralism): It silences a lot of people… So far as my observation reaches, the
silenced are almost always those who if they spoke would say something
characteristically…Christian. Try, for example, arguing that unrestricted
permission to abort the unborn is a social and political evil at a party in
Manhattan or a college town in Minnesota. Your arguments will not be rebutted;
heads will merely be turned as from one who has audibly broken wind. If, on the
other hand, you argue what is in fact the conventional opinion, you will be
praised for courage and compassion. Or relate two conversions, one to
Christianity and the other away from it; one will be received as a tale of
horrid narrow-mindedness and the other as an example of an open society’s
marvelous possibilities.
Robert
Jenson
The
God-Wars, Either/Or: The Gospel or Neopaganism, ed.
Carl Braaten and Robert Jenson, Eerdmans, 1995, p.
25.