Evangelicals are famous, or infamous (depending on who you talk to), for believing in absolute truth. And well we should adhere to absolute truth! I once heard Ravi Zacharias, renowned evangelical apologist, say: “Relativism as a philosophy of life cannot be true. Think of the statement, ‘All truth is relative.’ Now, if all truth is relative and you stick by that statement, then it even includes that statement which means that statement itself is relative, and therefore not always true. Or it excludes that statement but then it ends up positing an absolute while denying that absolutes actually exist. So one way or another, the scheme of relativism self-destructs under its own weight.”
However, because of our evangelical tendency to believe in absolute truths, we throw out anything that smacks of relativism, including its close cousin, pluralism. I want to argue that the former is bad, but the latter can be good or bad. What’s the difference?
Relativism says that truth is rooted in the individual hearer/receiver/observer rather than the source/author/fact. It is subjective rather than objective. It says that truth is determined by whatever you want it to be, that all truths are the same, and all truths are equally valid. This is ridiculous and nobody lives like this. If you believe in logic or science, you have to believe in absolute truth. The irony is that many atheists are scientists and relativists at the same time. I do not understand how these two things can possibly coexist. One of the variations of relativism is universalism, that all paths lead to God. If you ask any religious person (with the exception of, say, Hindus or Unitarians), they will say that their religion is basically incompatible with any other religion out there. All religions cannot be right, because they have mutually exclusive truth claims.
Pluralism is a little more nuanced. In fact, there are three different kinds of pluralism: one is good, one is neutral, and one is bad. The American Heritage Dictionary defines “pluralism” as:
1. The condition of being multiple or plural.
2.
a. A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society.
b. The belief that such a condition is desirable or socially beneficial.
c. The doctrine that reality is composed of many ultimate substances.
d. The belief that no single explanatory system or view of reality can account for all the phenomena of life.
As an American evangelical Christian, I think that 2a. is a positive definition of pluralism, 2b. is neutral, 2c. is ambiguous, and 2d. is negative. Let me clarify.
Definition 1 is a fact. In our world, and even just in America, there are many religions, many ethnicities, and many points of view about all sorts of things.
Definition 2a. is a good thing, in my opinion. It is one of the beautiful things about America. Even if we disagree with other religions, we are founded on religious freedom and for us Christians to enjoy that, we must afford that same luxury to others. And cultural/ethnic pluralism is also a good thing because it shows the creativity of God, and we can certainly learn from people of different colors, nationalities, and cultures. And we should live in harmony with everyone (which is different from saying that we should not ever voice our personal opinions or views, as long as it’s done in a civil way). There is a well-known phrase which goes something like this: “I may disagree with you, but I will fight for your right to hold your belief.” That is the good kind of pluralism. It is tolerance and free speech held in tension, two values that our society holds dear. Both are needed.
Definition 2b. is neutral because some forms of pluralism are socially beneficial, and others are not. The ones that are, are desirable. The ones that are not beneficial, are not desirable. Culture is similar to technology—it depends on how you use it. You can use the internet for good things like education, or bad things like pornography. You can use culture for good things like experiencing food recipes in new and exciting ways, or for bad things like justifying sin (“I’m not going to adhere to the laws of society or the mores of the church because that’s not my culture”).
Definition 2c. is ambiguous because it could mean anything. It can be supported epistemologically, ontologically, metaphysically, philosophically, or refuted in the same way. I won’t bother going into this because it doesn’t seem relevant to my argument.
Definition 2d. is negative because this is nearly equivalent to relativism as described above. It is slightly different, however: relativism says that all truth is the same. 2d. pluralism says that nobody has the truth. This is the flip-side of the relativism coin.
I want to advocate a 2a. version of pluralism. And this addresses the angst that so many of my students have in our Torrey Honors Institute class sessions. In class, we discuss a book Socratically. However, at the end of three hours, sometimes we don’t come to a conclusion or agreement on a particular point. For example, at least one of my colleagues who teaches in Torrey thinks that Homer’s Iliad is an evil book. I happen not to think so. So if my students discuss this in class, and we go back-and-forth over this for three hours, students are ready to tear out their hair at the end because the class is firmly divided 50-50.
This is how I quell my students’ anxieties (and I’ve had many students thank me for articulating this). I say to them:
I know you are frustrated right now because you want an answer, and you also feel like you’ve accomplished “nothing” over the last 3 hours because we haven’t come to a consensus conclusion. In fact, you probably want me (the professor) to end the debate by feeding you the “right” answer. That’s not how the Socratic method works! I can tell you what I think is the right answer, but does that make it the right answer? That makes it the professor’s answer. But different professors may have conflicting answers—what do you do with that? Now, you may react strongly against this because that sounds like relativism. And as good evangelical Christians, you believe in absolute truth. Fair enough. But what I’m advocating is pluralism, not relativism. I’m not saying there’s no absolute truth, but I’m saying that there’s no way to know for certain what the absolute truth is in this situation, and there may be several good educated opinions on the matter. Quite frankly, Homer is dead, and unless we can conjure him up from the grave, he can’t tell us what he originally thought, or what his purpose was in writing the Iliad. “Well,” you may think, “then what’s the point in discussing this if we can’t know?” Because I’m not satisfied with a “We can’t know therefore I won’t bother to try” answer! I’m not asking you to find out the absolute truth, which is impossible in this situation (that’s different from saying that there’s no absolute truth, mind you), but rather to come up with your most educated opinion that’s backed up with all the best evidence. That is called good, responsible research. If, during Don Rags (our oral final exams), I ask you the question of whether Milton’s Paradise Lost is a tragedy or a comedy, and you take the opposite stance of what I believe, I will not grade you down if you can clearly support your argument with the text. That is the difference between pluralism and relativism. The former says, “You and I have different opinions but at least we both base it on the text.” There is a common starting point outside of ourselves. The latter says, “You and I have different opinions but it’s rooted in what we get out of it, so it doesn’t matter what the text might say.” Relativism has different starting points (each individual person) and I don’t know how I can even have a coherent conversation with a relativist because our presuppositions are so different!
This is why, theologically, I have no problems with people taking an Arminian paedobaptist complementarian stance, even though I am a Calvinist credobaptist egalitarian. Hey, if they are deriving their positions from the Bible, and can intelligently back it up with textual evidence, I will say, “I may disagree with you, but at least we have the same basic presuppositions and therefore we can be in harmony.” This is a positive kind of pluralism.
I graduated from Gordon-Conwell Seminary, and I loved it because it was broadly evangelical. There were people who held all sorts of positions on non-essential issues. In contrast, a place like Westminster Seminary (which is strongly Calvinistic Reformed) basically has one line of thinking. If you are not Reformed, you are out. But I am a Calvinist, and I object to this! One of my good friends, who also is a Calvinist, said, “I chose Gordon-Conwell over Westminster because I wanted to be educated, not indoctrinated.” Perhaps that is a little more blunt than I’d say it, but the point being, I’d rather be in a seminary which allows for Calvinists and Arminians, paedobaptists and credobaptists, complementarians and egalitarians, rather than a seminary which just holds one party line, even if I happen to agree with that party line. If we allow for no room for discussion, then we are giving up our right to think and we are turning nonessentials into essentials. I have an equal problem with both hard-core Catholics and hard-core Calvinists in this respect. If the powers that be just tell you what to think and everything else is heresy, then we are just programmed robots. In Torrey, we do not teach you to throw away your brain and just assent to the party line.
Relativism is always bad. Pluralism, if taken in the positive 2a. way, can be good. Of course, we can sometimes slip into a negative 2b., or 2d., version of pluralism, and that is problematic. But in Torrey we do not spoon-feed our students the answers. We teach them to mine the answer for themselves. As the famous saying goes (to mix metaphors), “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day—teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” We want to teach our students to fish, or to mine, and hopefully they can learn to mine literature, history, philosophy, and theology for themselves. But it is a responsible mining that we hope to instill in them. And though generations of Torrey students may disagree on their interpretations of Homer, Milton, Shakespeare, Plato, at least they’re doing it intelligently and responsibly. And that’s how we hope they will approach the ultimate book, the Holy Bible, as well. Everything else is just a “practice” text.
