The Gospel in a Pluralistic Age

The Gospel in a Pluralistic Age: An Application to Our Current Theological Condition

When I had initially read through The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society in the late 1990s, I was not then in a position to give Newbigin’s argument the sustained attention that it merits. I view it now for the pivotal role it can potentially play, along with Barth’s “strange new world within the Bible” toward a revitalization of mainline Protestantism in discerningly placing the Word at the apex of the relationship with the World. What has moved me in this direction is the fuller realization that regardless as to what stance one takes on any number of positions, the faith dimension that gives shape to what becomes viewed as relevant knowledge (metanarrative construal) is inescapable, and is based on values. That is a partial explanation.

The other facet is a deeper experience with contemporary secular thought and value orientation and finding them wanting in substantial ways. This is not to deny the possibility of some dissimulation on my part in taking a leap based on an earlier conversion experience to Christianity that I may have at some level tendentiously sought to appropriate as a way of smoothing over tension points that may well have required closer examination. I cannot categorically deny that. Neither would I want to overly stress its possibility in that the various and countervailing streams of motivation are often more complex than we can readily fathom. Despite the lack of certainty amidst the seemingly never ending stream of questions that if pursued to their “logical” conclusions seldom come to exhausting resolution, one does have to choose on where one places one’s ultimate concern. Such decisions, however unconsciously processed are based on reasons which involve an intuitive element, a leap of faith, an inescapable reality in any event. I would like to think too, that the small still voice of God’s Holy Spirit was in the midst of this probing, however invariably mixed with the peculiarities of my own idiosyncratic searching.

To state it more affirmatively, a persisting faith in the durability and ultimate truth of the biblical revelation, its transcendent depth, and the prospect of personal intimacy with God through Christ, however partially experienced, seemed in the most fundamental sense a resource upon which I could rely unconditionally. That is, if I gave this incarnational vision something of the fullness of attention that any reorganization of one’s life on these grounds would, by definition warrant. That is so, on faith, given a belief in “a God who is there” upon which one can, in concert with a mighty cloud of witnesses claim as an ultimate reality, however infinite the gap remains between ontological assertion and any epistemological warrant this side of the eschaton. With this clearer mindset in place, a re-echoing of an earlier evangelical worldview, I have become better able to appropriate Newbigin’s challenging reconstruction of reality and more appreciative of the important role that, if I may put it this way, his Barthian turn could play in revitalizing mainline Protestantism on its own foundational faith claims.

Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998) was no fundamentalist. As a 20th century British missionary, Newbigin was keenly appreciative of the intellectual diversity of European culture and the importance of interfaith dialogue. He was well attuned to the dominant “plausibility structures” of the pluralistic society he inhabited at home and abroad and the prevailing incongruity of any claims to a faith based on the “radical particularity” of Christ revealed as the incarnate Son of the Lord, God, as professed in orthodox Christian doctrine. Sorely tempted by what he referred to as “reasonable Christianity,” “one that could be defended on the terms of my whole intellectual foundation as an Englishman,” Newbigin ultimately became convinced that in his accommodation to the prevailing precepts of the culture he was “guilty” of nothing less than “domesticating the gospel.” This realization was no mere fob, but the result of a profound probing into the logic of contemporary thought and culture, and drawing the conclusion that metanarrative, or storied construction of reality (including the postmodern one) was inescapable regardless of position held. For Newbigin, radical adherence to the Christian faith necessitated rejection of the dominant plausibility structures of our secular age in which the triple values of relativism, rationalism, and pluralism were held with absolute-like tenacity in which any religion claimed as truth could not stand.

Turning the postmodern argument on its head, Newbigin argued that there is no Archimedean point or foundational knowledge to ground absolute claims. In this respect there is a substantial difference between his view and Schaeffer’s even as both share a broad resonance in evangelical orthodoxy. Consequently, all knowledge claims, even those grounded on science, reason, common, or critical sense, have an irreducibly faith-based component, which requires acceptance in order to enter into the pathway of what they reveal about human experience. This fallibilistic stance is an irreducible component of all knowledge. What moves claims beyond the “merely” subjective is the commitment to and the evidence provided that any truth assertion makes as possessing universal validity even if the faith chosen (e.g. science) overshoots, as it must, any actual proof. In this respect, the dictum of pragmatic philosopher, Charles Peirce that in the long run, honest and rigorous inquiry among committed investigators will lead to a closer approximation of the truth, is the best for which we can hope. This, for Christianity in the most radical sense is the apocalyptic consummation in the eschatological coming of Christ and the ushering in of the New Jerusalem.

Whether on the side of science or religion, absolute certainty is beyond the purview of the human grasp, although one can, and actually must make absolute truth claims from an inescapable epistemological finitude and test them within the crucible of reality. Signs and “evidence of things unseen” is what is available for science and religion alike. For orthodox Christianity, the lack of absolute certainty on the grounds of knowledge is the result of our residence between the “not yet” symbolized in the Second Coming in which faith will be turned into sight and “the already” of the First Coming, as a foretaste of greater things to come. The tension between these dispensations of revelation are enduring even as the Holy Spirit mediates God’s grace in the here and now, however finitely realized any such appropriation may be. Drawing on Schaeffer, the Holy Spirit is a manifestation of the God who is there in the immediacy of our world, however evident or not his presence may seem to others as well as to self, as a small still voice.

On Newbigin’s reading, this initial entrée into human history for the purpose of “mak[ing] propitation for the sins of the people” (Heb 2:17b) provides a sufficient basis for believing in Christ as the centerpiece of human history. Reasoning is included even as questions and gaps persist, only after the step of faith as the basis for the search of surer knowledge of God is taken. In this respect, commitment to the Christian revelation is no different than adherence to the scientific method or the belief in the equal validity of all religions. What drives the specific commitment and the logic therein in the quest of knowledge is the starting place of any narrative construal.

The challenge that Newbigin sought to address was how one could come to “preach the gospel as truth, truth which is not to be domesticated within the assumptions of modern thought but which challenges these assumptions and calls for their revision.” Above all, this requires an internal source of authentication rather than any appendage to the reigning plausibility structures of our secular age that could be reduced to a mere belief or that could be explained through the “bar of reason and conscience” as determined by the premises of the prevailing cultural or scientific thinking. Such explanations in the mode of inquiry as laid out by Popper and Peirce could serve an apologetic function in conveying something of the premises of faith in idioms those outside of its boundaries might understand. Internal justification, however, can only stem from grounds intrinsic to its own innate meaning, including, “modifications which must be submitted to the judgment, in our case, of the Christian community as a whole [the community of knowledgeable inquirers in a manner analogous to the scientific community], and which may be subject to debate and dispute for many years.”

However valid a claim may be within a given tradition, regardless as to the permeability of its boundaries, the “logic” therein would not necessarily prove convincing or relevant to those outside its given framework. Such “evidence” offered, therefore, within a given “paradigm,” may not necessarily “demand a verdict” among those who remain outside its operative assumptions, however valid it may or may not be (e.g. proof offered for the physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth) for a given community of inquiring believers. Thus, beyond the apologetic function, there is an irreducible dogmatic core to the Christian faith, as there is, for example, with science, conveyed through its own inherent presuppositions that remain reasonably durable over time. Concepts evolve within a tradition that may push the boundaries of the given framework, which need to be (re)incorporated within, which for our case, I am describing as a generous orthodoxy. This is necessary to provide a definitional sharp edge against, for example, some form of gnosticism in the early centuries, or in our era, naturalistic philosophy, which cannot be accepted as normative for Christian belief even as it may be valuable in stimulating apologetic examination and theological reflection.

Thus, for Protestant Christianity, in particular, the primary claims of the New Testament canonically interpreted through the prism of the entire Bible remain the magisterial source of belief. Theology (whether academic, ecclesiastic, or lay) emerges as a secondary and necessary source of illumination, which fleshes out aspects and conclusions of the primary text within the context of historical and cultural unfolding over time. Disputes about many specifics aspects of contemporary or ancient Christian theology may or may not fall within the purview of what might be considered a generous Christian orthodoxy. That is a matter of public discernment within the household of faith in which disagreements over matters of much signification are likely to persist. However, to posit any other metanarative than the revelation of the incarnate Son of the living God as revealed first and foremost through the New Testament is to put faith in nothing less than another gospel.

In the current era, such a faith stance might be absorbed in what could be viewed as the ideology of pluralism, premised on the assumption that the various world religions provide equally valid pathways to right relationship with the living God. On this interpretation, Christianity is viewed as one pathway to the holy. This is a position I had once argued for with considerable tenacity as a self-acknowledged de-centered Christian whose primary plausibility structure resided within the realm of the secular. The stance maintained throughout this book is the Archimedean point upon which orthodox Christianity may well stand or fall; namely, the radical particularity of Christ revealed as the very Son of the living God, the “High Priest,” in whom “all the fullness [of God, the father] should dwell” (Col 1:19). This very “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) embodied conceptually in the Incarnation as the second person of the Trinity has historically held as an essential theological reflection of the core New Testament doctrine (Jn 14:9-13). Arising out of necessity to protect the early church from various distortions of a predominantly gnostic nature, this primary belief in Jesus the Christ as the Son and the very embodiment of God in human flesh has been the prevailing source of doctrinal stabilization for almost 1900 years.

It is this “scandalous” vision in its radical particularity of God incarnate that modern liberal Protestantism has considerably muted that provoked Newbigin’s counter-response. From his point of view, as well as the one agued in this book, to accept the predominant premises of modern liberal Protestantism is to effectively uproot the very basis of the Christian revelation that God in his fullness in human flesh is embodied in no other name than the person of Jesus the Christ. Christianity, in the pluralist vision which has so attracted modern liberal Protestantism would survive as one of the great world religions. However, it would be shorn of its radical specificity, even as the Christ narrative as mythos “beyond incarnation” would be given credibility as, perhaps, a beautiful story possessing a certain appeal and revealing a certain metaphorical truth to a given community of believers.

Spong’s vision rejects any call of a Great Commission of “mak[ing] disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). The conversion impulse, from his perspective, is viewed as an undesirable residue of an earlier era. Moreover, in Bishop Spong’s rendition, such core theological concepts as theism, the Incarnation, and original sin would be eliminated or radically re-fashioned in the “new Christianity.”

This depiction of Spong may be seen as a caricature of liberal Protestantism, the complexity of which is far from cut from the same prefabricated cloth. My objective at this point is not to enter into the subtleties of liberal theology, with roots extending back at least to Schleiermacher. I focus on Spong because in his “new Christianity for a new world” he logically carries out some of the most radical impulses of modern Protestant liberalism. In doing so, he places into sharp relief the core orthodox claim that Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) without equivocation and remainder, however much subtlety, explication, and humility is needed to effectively argue such, and however limited and incomplete the understanding of particular expositors may be. The fundamental question that both Spong and Newbigin pose in their different ways to the liberal Protestant sector is the primary one that Christ poses to Peter; namely, “who do you say I am?” (Mt 16:13-17). Upon the cornerstone of Peter’s response, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God” (v 16), much rides, namely, the legitimacy of Christianity as a distinct religion with its own peculiar claims, the definition of salvation, and the nature and character of God.

The question, in more contemporary terms is where one places one’s “ultimate concern” (Tillich) or primary “center of value” (H.R. Niebuhr), and the role of the reigning plausibility structures of the modern secular era in giving shape to them. Newbigin takes contemporary thought with penultimate signification. Nonetheless, he posits the “more difficult [and as argued throughout this book an ultimately more satisfying] enterprise of trying to understand modern thought in light of the biblical story.” This requires much subtle theological probing and apologetic explication in which any semblance of caricature is rejected as un-Christian on its face. Any such efforts in this direction are likely to be, if not piecemeal, highly partial, although I am pushing throughout this book on the importance of grappling diligently with the issue of truth claims even those beyond epistemological certainty. What is important, at the least, is the trajectory, namely a reversal of a century’s tendency by placing the biblical revelation front and center of the mainline church’s concerns in a manner which thoroughly comes to terms with modern critical scholarship. The critical discussion between postliberal and evangelical theology is one pivotal center where such key probing is currently operative, one that serves as a touchstone for this book.

For all intents and purposes there are two alternatives. There is the direction posited by Spong in which the core tenets of orthodoxy are gutted in order to preserve something of the essence of the Christian mythos. Or there is the direction of canonically grounded, scholarly informed generous orthodoxy in which the fundamental precepts of the Bible grounded in the New Testament revelation becomes the basis for interpreting and interrogating the world. With Newbigin and Barth I posit the latter, clearly through a position of faith in search of greater knowledge and with the acknowledgment that the questions stemming from the culture have much penultimate signification. The core assumption requiring much articulation is that in Christ the pathway to universal history shaped by God’s consuming vision of New Israel is revealed even as we live “between the times” of the First and Second Coming and see in a “mirror, dimly” (1Cor 13:12). This presupposition cannot be proven by human reason, evidence, or logic, even as reason, logic and “evidence of things unseen” can and will be given. “The substance of [these] things hoped for” (Heb 11:1) is the focal point of this book.

The Faith Once for all Delivered to the Saints in Light of Contemporary World Views to the Contrary

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:11)

Self-Perception and the Indubitable Reality of God as Radical Other

This is a particularly vexing issue today in that two fundamentally not entirely resolvable precepts have attained a powerful pull in our contemporary culture. The one is the predominance of self-perception, without which it would be difficult to fathom how one could function at least in our western setting. Whatever its ultimate truth (and the Bible itself is clear about the importance of personal consciousness and conscience), to deny or even downplay its centrality as a core axiom of personal identity would be a most unfortunate mistake. Yet when developed into a fully blown axiom accepted both as self-evident and at some inexpressible level as the truth--that is, as far as anyone can come to any notion of "truth" in the contemporary era which I argue is inescapable even in its very postmodern denial, takes on a religious aura in its own right. It is such a denial expressed in the guise of a self-evident truth statement that I would characterize as a major idolatry of our time.

No doubt faith comes to believers through their self-understanding, but that to which it points, the revelation of God through Christ, extends to a reality beyond the self that cannot be reduced to any level of self-perception. Granted that the faith proclaimed speaks directly to the self even in language beyond self-reference, making any claim of transcending self-understanding exceedingly problematic and at some level, irreducibly circular. Self-circularity may be unavoidable in a faith stance that proclaims to reveal itself to consciousness--even consciousness collectivized in the body of Christ. At the very least, the proclamation of God revealed in a particularly unique manner in Christ needs to extend beyond self-referential reductionism in order to gain an appreciative grasp of what it is and more scandalously who it is that is being veiled through the fragile instrumentalities of human understanding. For the very basis of faith is the belief "that he exists," without which one lacks an axiomatic starting point that makes further inquiry into the phenomenological experience of the Christian pathway on its own terms, impossible.

This struggle to transcend the self in proclaiming the revelation of God was a challenge mightily struggled for in the neo-orthodox theologian Karl Barth, who in his partial success opened up a fresh taproot into a transcendent theology which at the least broke the stranglehold of the hegemony of a religious orientation grounded first and foremost in feeling. Feeling, what Barth formally referred to as “actualization” remained important, though Barth’s more fundamental contribution to 20th century theology was the emphasis he placed on “objectivism;” that is, the reality of God as radical other who also lives within us as a theological; bulwark against what Barth and others viewed as an excessive reliance on self-understanding as the basis of rather than the outgrowth of faith in a fully-orbed biblical theology grounded ultimately in the awesome depth of a personal yet infinite God revealed most fully to human beings in and through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ as Son of God and Son of Man.

Rudolph Bultmann and Paul Tillich, central figures in the neo-orthodox school of early-to mid 20th century theology, accepted and sought to extend the implications of Barth's dialectical theology in grappling with the ineradicable tension between faith and culture. However, they rejected his emphasis on dogmatics as grounding point, and opted instead for some version of an existential theology based on the centrality of self in critical dialogue with the biblical God and 20th century European philosophy.

The Gap Between the "One Truth" Claim of Faith and the Enduring Reality of Cultural and Religious Pluralism

The seemingly counter problem is the belief in a pluralistic world view in which in principle, one idea or reality is as equally valid as another, whether one is examining world religions or different realms of religious and secular thought. Thus, while noting that there are obvious differences between religions, especially among those that are monotheistic and those that are not, a commonly held belief is that at the most fundamental level each religious tradition is ultimately a pathway into the inexpressible or what Rudolph Otto refers to as The Holy.

Whether one is speaking of diverse religious or secular perspectives, and there are many world views, the extent to which they are compatible with each other based on a core belief in egalitarian pluralism is a major issue in itself. It is this, which needs to be viewed as a faith stance as powerfully adhered to as any "traditional" belief. Assuming this to be the case, that all world views, secular or religious, are faith stands at the axiomatic level, then the counter question needs to be asked, on what grounds is this presupposition of pluralism grounded; to further press, what are the underlying assumptions upon such a conjecture buttressed? In asking these questions I am not categorically rejecting the claims of a pluralistic universe (William James), but am seeking to press into a better understanding of the underlying frames of belief that ground all claims of knowledge. What I am challenging is any taken for granted assumption as an ultimate world view and countering it with the claims of the Bible that ultimately, God is all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28). Obviously, this cannot be proven, though there is a great deal of first-hand testimony and “evidence of things unseen” that, in my view, merit a great deal closer look than is commonly granted, though knowledge in its own right without the salvo of faith is insufficient and will not likely be persuasive on its own grounds.

Whatever the difficulties, a key stumbling block in coming to terms with Christian faith claims as reflected in 20th century philosophy and cultural life is the knotty matter of seriously grappling with any notion of "truth," some serious notion upon which Christianity is based. This namely is the truth claim that God exists and that he is revealed and embodied in the full human sense in Christ and only in Christ, though reflected in part in other revelations even as the knowledge of Christ through the prism of faith can only be grasped and lived out in part.

This grappling with “truth” is obviously a difficult philosophical issue that I can only begin to address at this point. The core issue is whether there can be any such reality as truth even as the search for it, however imprecisely one defines it, seems to be built into the hard wiring of human existence. Thus, one might say (and I can't "prove" this) we are meant for the truth and can never rest satisfied unless that desire were met in at least fundamentally reorienting our lives in moving toward it. Thus, at the very least truth servers as a clarion call to human fulfillment and satisfaction, however much the gap between the desire and attainment, which, I argue, is unsearchable and ultimately beyond comprehension, persists.

The fundamental claim and the scandal of radical Christianity is Christ's proclamation that he is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6) in which no other truth claim can possibly compare. On this profession satisfaction in the full sense of the term can only be found in a thorough embrace of Christ as the fullness of God in human flesh. This is an incarnational faith revealed to human beings through the Spirit of God, as an essential dimension of God himself in his Trinitarian fullness. Its entry requires the way of the cross emblematic of utter self-denial as the basis itself of coming into the glorification of God revealed in and through Christ consciousness, which as New Adam engulfs and humanizes our own. It is this denial of old self to aspire toward new self in Christ that, in juxtaposition to the many exigencies of personal life and more visible public history that may be one of the most troublesome stumbling blocks to a solid embrace of the Christian faith. Yet, it is a direction established by God himself as revealed in the Old and New testaments to counter our own innate selfishness, a major source of much alienation and pain we cause others as well as ourselves in the very process of living our lives in which God through Christ became our vicarious High Priest.

To restate a core contention of C.S. Lewis, either there is something fundamentally true about the core New Testament claim that in Christ the fullness of God in human flesh resides or that the claim of incomparability in which Christ is the Alpha and Omega of human existence and experience is profoundly flawed to its core. If the latter pertains, the claim needs to be needs to be categorically rejected even as Christianity as a metaphor of one way to God or the inexpressible, among many other ways may have merit at least for those to whom the metaphor speaks.

At some root level it is impossible to evade the dilemma on the need to decide on the unconditional claim of Christ as the fullness of God in human flesh who both models and offers salvation to all who receive him. However smoothly or subtly one seemingly slides by the possibility of a decisive encounter with the living God, is at some core level a choice itself with indeterminate, but substantial, though not irreversible consequences in which the door of God’s revelatory grace may or may not be open to a particular person at another time. Now very well may be the appointed time if you hear the voice of God ever so faintl. For seeking to make a "decision" for Christ simply when one will without the grace of God intervening, is on the operative assumptions of Christian biblical theology an untenable impossibility. For the wind blows where and when it will.

However improbable all this may seem, it is impossible to attain first-hand experience of the depths of the Christian revelation without entering into and remaining in its pathway of understanding which entails a subtle blending of the will with the very prompting of God, however that ineffable presence may become manifest. The veracity of such a revelatory truth can only be revealed in the movement in faith itself in which "the good shepherd" will make his voice known (John 10:1-18). While there is a certain sureness in God's revealed voice (John 10:4-5)such knowledge remains only partial since given the natture of who God is, it is impossible to know him fully (Deuteronomy 29:29). Rather, the Christian pathway is a life from faith to faith in a mode of greater knowing where sight as the breadth and depth of God's glory is beyond our capacity to fathom and hence to perceive even as the promise of greater fullfillment extends into eternity where immortality swallows up mortality (1 Corinthians 15:50-55)