Over at the Ligonier website an article was recently posted by Dr. R. C. Sproul. It is a very good article but it has the deficiency of not saying enough, or of not looking at the issue that is being pursued in a well rounded fashion. It is not the case, that in this instance, I disagree with Dr. Sproul, rather it is the case that I think what is said could be said in a richer way. In order to see the issues that Dr. Sproul takes on in a way consistent with what he has to say yet hopefully offering an added layer I have decided to engage this article. I don’t know if I will say anything here that I haven’t said before but the hope is that by laying my interaction next to Sproul’s article people will have the ability to see more of the whole picture as it touches the culture with which we currently live.
Sproul’s comments are blocked. My response follows the blocked quotes. Sproul’s first paragraph to this article was introductory and has been deleted because there wasn’t anything with which to interact.
In our day, where pluralism reigns in the culture, there is as much satirical hostility to the idea of one God as there was in Nietzsche’s satire. But today, that repugnance to monotheism is not a laughing matter. In the culture of pluralism, the chief virtue is toleration, which is the notion that all religious views are to be tolerated, all political views are to be tolerated. The only thing that cannot be tolerated is a claim to exclusivity.
There is truth here but there is also another way to argue this. First, I would add that pluralism is a myth concocted by our culture in order to shield itself from the reality that it remains homogeneous and in order to force dissenting people into this homogeneous culture. The non-pluralistic nature of our culture is seen in the cultural homogeneity found in the fact that the overwhelming majority of our culture believes in pluralism. Further, it must be clearly articulated today that pluralism advances its own claim of exclusivity. The adherents of pluralism come forth and decry people of monotheistic faiths and who have the one conviction that there is only one way, but what many people fail to see is that the adherents of pluralism are in effect saying this because their one conviction is that there are many ways.
Look at what I have put into bold relief. Both those who are non-pluralists and those who are putatively pluralist both have a single one conviction that is guiding them. Where their difference lies is in what that one conviction is. On this basis they are no more pluralistic then the Jew, the Muslim, or the Biblical Christian. This homogeneous approach reveals itself as the adherents of what we call ‘pluralism’ practice the exclusivity of social ostracizing against those who don’t share their one conviction that there are many ways. What is richly ironic here is that the exclusivism of the putative pluralist gets called “inclusivism” while the the exclusivism of anybody who disagree with their version of exclusivism (Christians or Muslims or Jews) gets labeled as ‘exclusive.’
What I have said here is of monumental importance. It is monumentally important because to many Christians are being buffaloed into thinking that pluralism really is pluralistic. It’s most definitely not! Until the West awakens to the smoke and mirrors that pluralism is using in order to hide itself from it’s homogeneous and mono-cultural and mono-theistic character the West will continue to slip into Statist totalitarianism because what putatively pluralistic culture needs in order to continue is a God who can police all the gods it has tolerated in the culture. That one god is the State.
Said simply, pluralism creates a homogeneous culture (mono-culture) based on the mono-theism of humanism. Pluralism is a myth created by those who desire to advance their own pursuit of the mono-culture they desire to build.
There is a built-in, inherent antipathy towards all claims of exclusivity. To say that there is one God is repulsive to the pluralists. To say that one God has not revealed Himself by a plurality of avatars in history is also repugnant. A single God with an only begotten Son is a deity who adds insult to injury by claiming an exclusive Son. 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.
But the question here that must be asked is … WHY? Why is there a built in antipathy towards all claims of exclusivity? The answer is found in the fact that by redefining exclusivity so that it doesn’t include the exclusivity found in putative pluralism what can be accomplished is the strangling of the God or gods that compete(s) with the god of putative pluralism. Also the reason that the exclusive claims of Christianity in terms of God, in terms of Christ, in terms of salvation, cannot live in peaceful coexistence with pluralists is because they are not pluralistic. They desire to advance their one conviction that there are many ways to God and so they desire to put to death those who have the one conviction that there is only one way.
Pluralism is a myth!
Beyond the question of the existence of God and of His Son, and of a singular way of salvation, there is also a rejection of any claim to having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation.
This just isn’t true.
What is true is that the putative pluralist will insist that they reject any claim to having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation and the reason they insist on rejecting that is because that ‘rejection’ hides from people the location of their exclusive source of divine revelation. What is being hid is that the putative pluralist has a exclusive source of divine revelation and that exclusive source is their own autonomous reason. Remember when we talk about putative pluralists (really homogeneous mono-culturalists) what we are talking about is humanism. In humanism man is the god who is not dead (and who kills god because he desires his place) and the revelation he receives in his religion is his own autonomous reason.
So, while we would agree with Dr. Sproul that the putative pluralist says ‘he rejects any claim to having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation’ we would insist that he makes this claim in order to make his belief system and his evangelism efforts look broad and reasonable.
At the time of the Reformation, the so-called solas of the Reformation were asserted. It was said that justification is by faith alone (sola fide), that it is through Christ alone (solus Christus), that it is through grace alone (sola gratia), and that it is for God’s glory alone (soli Deo gloria). But perhaps most repugnant to the modern pluralist is the exclusive claim of sola Scriptura. The idea of sola Scriptura is that there is only one written source of divine revelation, which can never be placed on a parallel status with confessional statements, creeds, or the traditions of the church. Scripture alone has the authority to bind the conscience precisely because only Scripture is the written revelation of almighty God. The implications of sola Scriptura for pluralism are many. Not the least of them is this: It carries a fundamental denial of the revelatory character of all other religious books. An advocate of sola Scriptura does not believe that God’s revealed Word is found in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon, the Bible and in the Koran, the Bible and in the Upanishads, the Bible and in the Bhagavad Gita; rather, the Christian faith stands on the singular and exclusive claim that the Bible and the Bible alone is God’s written word.
The most important implication of sola Scriptura for pluralism is that it denies not only the legitimacy of all the Holy books that Sproul mentions but it also denies the legitimacy of autonomous reason which is the Holy book of the putative pluralist, who is in reality every bit the homogeneous mono-theistic, mono-cultural creature as the most rabid Muslim, Jew, or Christian.
The motto of the United States is e pluribus unum. However, since the rise of the ideology of pluralism, the real Unum of that motto has been ripped from its foundation. What drives pluralism is the philosophical antecedent of relativism. All truth is relative; therefore, no one idea or source can be seen as having any kind of supremacy. 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.
Dr. Sproul’s first sentence above is true in a sense. But it is also not true in a sense. It is true in the sense that the Unum that has been ripped from the foundation is the Unum that we started with when this country was founded. It is not true in the sense that no Unum exists. This country is still devoted to taking the many and making them one, but the ‘one’ they desire to make them all into is the one of humanism. That all truth is relative is the absolute one idea or one source that must have supremacy.
Next Dr. Sproul tries to create a distinction that I am not sure works. He say’s that “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.” What I am struggling with here is trying to understand how if each law system descend from a particular religion those particular law systems could ever find valid a religion, that by its very existence, creates a law system to contend against the law system that is finding it valid.
Second, it is difficult to understand how a law system would tolerate a religion that isn’t valid. It seems to me that the very toleration of religions in the body politic by the law system does indeed suggest that the religions in question are valid. I would say that it is a fallacious assumption on one hand to say that a law system could tolerate a religion without at the same time giving it validity.
Sadly, with a philosophy of relativism and a philosophy of pluralism, the science of logic doesn’t matter. Logic is escorted to the door and is firmly booted out of the house onto the street. There is no room for logic in any system of pluralism and relativism. Indeed, it’s a misnomer to call either a system, because it is the idea of a consistent, coherent view of truth that is unacceptable to the pluralist. The fact that people reject exclusive claims to truth does not invalidate those claims. It is the Christian’s duty to hold firm to the uniqueness of God and of His Christ and not compromise with the advocates of pluralism.
I would disagree with Dr. Sproul here. While it certainly is the case that true logic (is there any other kind?) is shown the door, the putative pluralist still appeals to (illogical) logic. I would disagree that putative pluralism is not a system. Certainly it is a contradictory and inconsistent system, just as all other false beliefs, but it is still system. And for our purposes it is a system if only because we are actually trying to build a culture on this ‘system.’
Finally, I hope Dr. Sproul realizes the implications in his last sentence. The implications of that statement are vast and pronoun.
In the end it is not so much that I disagree with Dr. Sproul’s analysis but rather I think we need to see all of this from more then one dimension.