Beyondpluralism

Beyond absolutism,
pluralism, and relativism

To a proper confidence,
otherliness, and respect

Let’s go back 500 years:

The Roman Catholic Church has a system for
preserving moral order.

Truth resides in people - known as THE
AUTHORITIES - who are given understanding by
God along with the right to tell others what to
think and believe.

Martin Luther questioned this system, believing
that the individual Christian could understand the
Bible rightly, and that THE AUTHORITIES could be
wrong.

THE AUTHORITIES believed that
this rebellion against the way truth
is known would result in anarchy,
violence, and atheism.

Were they right?

THE AUTHORITIES believed that
this rebellion against the way truth
is known would result in anarchy,
violence, and atheism.

Were they right?

What if we are in a similar time
today?

What if our dominant method of
knowing truth today is being
challenged by a new methodology …

How will we respond?

Questioning how truth is known
and disseminated is not a new
problem.

GOING WAY BACK …
The Sophists (5th century BC): Protagoras, Thales, Critias
- skepticism about ancient myths and more recent
theories, awareness of individual subjective bias and
perspective, pragmatic turn (we can’t know what’s true -
just what works), stimulation for individual thought and
exploration.

They energized and yet destabilized philosophy and
ethics, paving the way for Socrates.

Going Way Back:

Socrates - searching for absolute and universal goodness
and justice - so all acts may be evaluated, chosen,
rejected, or judged by a reliable, objective standard.
(There is no good, better, or worse unless there is a
standard to evaluate by.) A theory of ethics.

Plato - searching for the absolute and universal essence of
all things - so all things may be truly known. A theory of
being/reality (ontology) and knowledge (epistemology).

The search for the idea, the ideal, the form, the essence -
not a human construction, but a reality embedded in the
nature of things. (Example: Mathematics)

LET NO ON UNACQUAINTED WITH GEOMETRY ENTER HERE
- Inscription above the door of Plato’s Academy

Along comes Aristotle:
Shifts reality from essence (idea, ideal, form, universal) to
substance (existence, particular). Ideas/forms become
categories created by the intellect based on common
qualities - thus universal ideals are humanly constructed
(constructs).

Zoology and botany - not geometry - become the model:
all things grow and become, moving toward full
development. Matter grows or evolves towards form.

Forms are intrinsic patterns, intelligible structures,
governing dynamics, and the end or purpose (telos)
toward which things move.

The Classical Tension:

The relation between …

1. Universal unchanging objective invisible
principles, ideas, ideals, forms. (Perceived
through either rational mathematics or mystical
contemplation)

2. Particular changing visible phenomena.

3. The faculties of the subject - the observer and
thinker - who observes the visible phenomena
and seeks or ponders the invisible universals.

Again: questioning how truth
is known and disseminated is
not a new problem.

And it is not simply an
intellectual problem either.
It is profoundly social and
political.

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
(Descartes, Enlightenment, Rationalism)

AND

SOCIAL HISTORY:
(Thirty years war, colonialism)

THE 17TH CENTURY AND absolute
objective truth

Descartes’ anxious dreams
- Use the weapons of the enemy to
defeat the enemy.
Descartes’ experiment
-Use doubt to defeat doubt.
Descartes’ ﬁnding:
-I can doubt my way to an undoubtable
statement: I doubt therefore I am.

Newtonian (Modern) World:
Knowledge is like a building or wall.

“Fundamental” Beliefs are
established by research (doubt).

They must be “incorrigible” and universal - which
means non-subjective, and absolute.

Certainty is built from the bottom up.

Christians - Catholic and Protestant - at
ﬁrst resisted and then accepted this shift
from the medieval approach to knowledge
(reliance on the authorities) to the
modern approach (reliance on doubt,
analysis, critique, experimentation,
scientiﬁc method, etc.).

Christianity has thrived in its
embrace of modernity.
Why upset the status quo?

INTELLECTUAL HISTORY:
descartes to derrida

AND

SOCIAL HISTORY:
holocaust & hiroshima

THE 2OTH CENTURY AND
METANARRATIVE

The profound disquiet of postwar
European intellectuals:
How could we do this?
Has reason failed?
Where did we go wrong?

Michael Polanyi

The concern spreads -
Holocaust
Hiroshima
Colonialism
Racism and Apartheid
Pollution and the Environment
The Oppression of Women
Totalitarian Ideologies
Genocide
Terrorism

Universal systems/
Ideologies
Totalizing
metanarratives =
Excessive conﬁdence

Michel Foucault: The
postmodern condition
consists in incredulity
toward
metanarratives.

WHAT DO WE DO?
We name the disease:
Excessive conﬁdence …
Universal systems/Ideologies …
Totalizing metanarratives …
Absolutism

Western Civilization prescribes the
treatment:

Western Civilization seeks to treat the
cancer of
ABSOLUTISM with
the chemotherapy
of
PLURALISM
and
DECONSTRUCTION

Jacques Derrida

ABSOLUTISM: Upholding the conviction
a) that one single explanatory system or
view of reality can account for all the
phenomena of life and b) that conceptions
of truth and moral values are universal
and timeless, not relative to the persons
or groups holding them.

PLURALISM
1. The condition of being multiple or plural.
2. Sociology.
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.
3. Philosophy.
A. The doctrine that reality is composed of
many ultimate substances.
B. The belief that no single explanatory
system or view of reality can account for all the
phenomena of life.

DECONSTRUCTION - NOT DESTRUCTION!
- A PROCESS OF ANALYZING THE
ASSUMPTIONS BY WHICH POWERFUL
PEOPLE ANALYZE.
- A PROCESS OF TURNING
METANARRATIVES BACK ON
THEMSELVES SO AS TO REDUCE THEIR
POWER TO DESTROY.
- A PROCESS OF DEMONSTRATING HOW
BELIEFS WERE CONSTRUCTED BY
HUMANS - OFTEN BY TELLING THE STORY
OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT.

“DECONSTRUCTION IS LOVE.”
“JUSTICE CAN NOT BE
DECONSTRUCTED.”

Jacques Derrida

When deconstruction and pluralism are
translated to the popular level, they may
become …

RELATIVISM
A theory, especially in ethics or
aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and
moral values are not absolute but are
relative to the persons or groups holding
them.
… which may degenerate into

FOLK RELATIVISM
The belief that all beliefs are equally valid,
that no belief is better than another, and
that every opinion is equally true.

The problem with folk relativism …

1. It is absurd: THERE ARE NO
ABSOLUTES! (except this one!)
2. It is like acid that eats away
commitment … a chemotherapy that
can kill the patient.
3. It isn’t strong enough to stand up to
violent fundamentalism and
consumerism.

Thought experiment:
Remember the Taliban’s destruction of
the Pre-Islamic Buddhist statues in
Eastern Afghanistan?

If Christians were in control of
Afghanistan, should they have done
the same thing?

Emergent

Or Integral

Thinking

1. Letters

2. Syllables

3. Words

4. Simple sentences

5. Complex sentences

6. Paragraphs

7. Stories
Integral - Narrative - 8. poetry
Emergent Thinking:

1. Infant

2. Child

3. Youth

4. Young adult

5. Adult

6. Middle-aged

7. Senior
Integral - Narrative - 8. Elderly
Emergent Thinking: 9. Dying/beyond

1. Band

2. Tribe

3. Chiefdom

4. Kingdom

5. Empire

6. Nation

7. Superpower
Integral - Narrative - 8. Network???
Emergent Thinking:

1. Animist

2. Polytheist

3. Ethnic/tribal
monotheist

4. Global monotheist

5. Ethnic/tribal
trinitarian

6. Global trinitarian
Integral - Narrative -

Emergent Thinking:

1. Body

2. Reptilian brain

3. Mammalian brain

4. Human brain

5. Mind/will/emotions

6. Cultural forming

7. Experiences,
Integral - Narrative - memories, story

Emergent Thinking: 8. Soul

1. Magical/Tribal

2. Imperial/National

3. Historical/
Progressive

4. Objective/Scientific

5. Colonial/Absolutist

6. Pluralist

Integral - Narrative - 7. Relativist

Emergent Thinking: 8. Beyond relativist

ABSOLUTISM AS CANCER

RELATIVISM AS CHEMOTHERAPY

IS THE GOSPEL AN ABSOLUTIST
(TOTALITARIAN) METANARRATIVE

OR A PRIVATE PERSONAL TRUE-FOR-ME
RELATIVIST NARRATIVE

Or … An embracing, redeeming,
and unfolding narrative that is
beyond both absolutism and
relativism?

it ion
s
tr an
L ate
it ion
s
t ran
Old modelEarly
or
paradigm

New
paradigm or
it ion model
s
tr an
L ate
n
s itio
Old t ran
y
E arl
paradigm
or model

What we need:
Not the excessive and arrogant
confidence of modernity.
Not the insufficient confidence of
relativism.
… We need a proper confidence
as followers of Jesus.

Who will model this proper
conﬁdence?

BEYOND MODERN
ABSOLUTISM AND EARLY
POSTMODERN RELATIVISM:
Thoughts from N. T. Wright
THE CHALLENGE OF JESUS
IVP, 1999

An epistemology of love

We dare not, as Christians, remain
content with an epistemology wished
upon us from one philosophical and
cultural movement, part of which was
conceived in explicit opposition to
Christianity. …we should allow our
knowledge of [Jesus], and still more
his knowledge of us, to inform us
about what true knowing really is.

I believe that a biblical account of
‘knowing’ should take love as the
basic mode of knowing, with the love
of God as the highest and fullest sort
of knowing that there is, and should
work, so to speak, down from there.

What is love all about? When I love, I
afﬁrm the differentness of the
beloved; not to do so is of course not
love at all but lust. But at the same
time when I love, I am not a detached
observer, the ﬂy on the wall of
objectivist epistemology. I am
passionately and compassionately
involved with the life and being of that
… which I am loving.
[note: beyond subject and objective)

I believe that we can and must as
Christians within a postmodern world
give an account of human knowing
that will apply to music and
mathematics, to biology and to
history, to theology and to chemistry.
We need to articulate, for the post-
postmodern world, what we might call

an epistemology of love.

This is at the heart of our great
opportunity here and now, for serious
and joyful Christian mission to the
post-postmodern world. We live in a
time of cultural crisis. At the moment
I don’t hear anyone out there pointing
a way forward out of the postmodern
morass; some people are still trying to
put up the shutters and live in a pre-
modern world, many are clinging to
modernism for all they’re worth …

But we can do better than that…. The
gospel of Jesus points us and indeed
urges us to be at the leading edge of
the whole culture, articulating in
story and music and art and
philosophy and education and poetry
and politics and theology and even,
heaven help us, biblical studies, a
worldview that will mount the
historically rooted Christian challenge

to both modernity and
postmodernity, leading the way into
the post-postmodern world with joy
and humor and gentleness and good
judgment and true wisdom.

I believe we face the question: if not
now, then when? … If not us, then
who? And if the gospel of Jesus is not
the key to this task, then what is?
(197-198)

To a proper, humble confidence (not
absolutism), and to love for neighbor,
stranger, and enemy (not simply
pluralism or relativism), rooted in the
good news of Jesus Christ

From E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973), The Christ of
the Indian Road:

When Mohammedanism confronted
Hinduism the demand was of absolute
surrender - a complete wiping of the
slate of the past and the dictates of the
prophet written in its stead…. Does
Jesus take the same attitude? Are his
demands upon India the same as
Mohammed? Is the slate to be wiped
clean and the past absolutely blotted
out?

It must be confessed that this has often
been the attitude and demand of the
Christian missionary. If Christianity is
more or less identiﬁed with Western
civilization and presented as such, or if
it is a system of church government and
a more or less ﬁxed theological system,
blocked off and rigid and presented as
such, then I do not see how we can
escape the attitude of the Mohammedan.
The past must be wiped out and a clean
slate presented for our theological
systems, our ecclesiastical
organizations, and our civilization to be

But if our message be Christ, and Christ
alone, then this does not necessarily
follow. He may turn to India as he
turned to Judaism and say, “I came not
to destroy but to fulfill.” Just as he
gathered up in his own life and person
everything that was fine and beautiful in
Jewish teaching and past and gave it a
new radiant expression, so he may do
the same with India. The fact is that the
words that he used would imply that, for
it is a generic term: “I came not to
destroy but to fulfill,” it is locally applied
to the Law and the Prophets, but capable

David Bosch
Born 1930
Died 1992 (killed in car crash)
Missionary in Transkei, 1957-1971
Professor of Missiology, University of South
Africa, after 1971
Dean, Faculty of Theology, 1974-1977, 81-87
Chair, National Initiative for Reconciliation,
1989-1992
Fluent in Xhosa, Afrikaans, Dutch, German,
English

“I don’t think I can leave my
colleagues and the struggle for
South Africa. It is a critical
moment and that is where God
has placed me”
(late 1980’s, regarding invitation
to teach in U.S.)

“We are dealing with a mystery.”
(TM 483)

Eight Perspectives

1. Accept the coexistence of
different faiths … willingly, not
begrudgingly.

Christian mission must be
dialogical.

The seven formative factors in
theology …
experience, revelation, Scripture,
tradition, culture, reason …
(Macquarrie, 1977)
and dialogue
with other religions.
(TM 483)

“One-way, monological travel is
out, as is militancy in any form.”

Eight Perspectives

2. Dialogue presupposes
commitment, not the sacrifice of
one’s position.

“Without my commitment to the
gospel, dialogue becomes a mere
chatter; without the authentic
practice of the neighbor it becomes
arrogant and worthless.”
(TM 484)

Eight Perspectives

3. We assume that dialogue takes
place in the presence of God, that
God is an unseen partner in our
dialogues, with something to teach
all participants.

“We are not the “haves,” the beati
possidentes, standing over against
spiritual “have-nots,” the massa
damnata. We are all recipients of
the same mercy, sharing in the
same mystery.”
(TM 484)

Eight Perspectives

4. Missional dialogue requires
humility.
Apologetics often requires
apology: the line of error and
injustice runs through, not
between, all religions, including
Christianity.

…it is when we are weak that we
are strong. So, the word that
perhaps best characterizes the
Christian church in its encounter
with other faiths is vulnerability….
The people who are to be won and
saved should, as it were, always
have the possibility of crucifying
the witness of the gospel. (TM
485)

Humility also means showing
respect for our forebears in the
faith, for what they have handed
down to us, even if we have reason
to be acutely embarrassed by
their racist, sexist, and imperialist
bias. The point is that we have no
guarantees that we will do any
better than they did.

We delude ourselves if we believe
that we can be respectful to other
faiths only if we disparage our
own. (TM 485)

Eight Perspectives

5. We realize that each religion is
its own world, requiring very
different responses from
Christians.

Eight Perspectives

6. “We affirm that witness does
not preclude dialogue but invites
it, and that dialogue does not
preclude witness but extends and
deepens it.” (San Antonio CWME)

Eight Perspectives

7. Our version of the “old, old
story” may not have been the
“original true story,” and so we
must continually re-discover the
gospel.

Eight Perspectives
8. We must live with a paradox:
“We cannot point to any other way
of salvation than Jesus Christ; at
the same time, we cannot set limits
to the saving power of God…. We
appreciate this tension, and do not
attempt to resolve it. (San Antonio)

The goal: beyond absolutist, beyond
relativist …
To see the gospel as an integrative
story which weaves fragments into
a coherent, healing, growing fabric
of meaning and mission.

The Modern Missionary Movement:
Perhaps we’re entering the fifth?

1. Apostolic (Mediterranean Eurasia)

2. Patristic (North Africa)

3. Celtic (Northern Europe)

4a. Modern Catholic

4b. Modern Protestant

1. Aligned with European colonial
empire/expansion (Northern and
Southern)

2. Attracted the most innovative,
progressive members of society

3. Aligned with modern technology and
medicine

4. Competitive


5. Generally spread European culture with
the gospel

6. Generally led to “redemption and lift” in
early stages, but failed to extend the lift.

7. Promoted literacy and primary/secondary
education

8. Dominated by Rome, England, and U.S.

9. Largely denominational.


10. “Absolutist” - colonial about theological
understanding as well as culture.

A BRIEF BUT IMPORTANT DIGRESSION:

PLURALISM, RELATIVISM …

AND

fRAGMENTATIOn

From Jonathan R. Wilson’s “Living Faithfully in a Fragmented
World: Lessons for the Church from MacIntyre’s After
Virtue.” (Thanks to James Mills)

One of the most popular ways of characterizing the
challenge of the modern world to Christian mission is
to say that we live in a pluralistic world. This pluralism
is supposed to be a particular challenge for a church
that has lived in a monolithic world for so long and
has not had to compete with other claims to truth.

The second lesson that we learn from MacIntyre’s After Virtue is
that we live, not in a pluralistic world, but among fragmented
worlds. As we will see, this characterization makes the
challenge of our situation much deeper than pluralism….
Pluralism, as I am using it here, describes a world of competing
outlooks, traditions, or claims to truth. It pictures a culture
made up of coherent, integral communities, traditions, or
positions that can be clearly differentiated from one another.
Although they disagree and may often be in conﬂict, where
these disagreements are located and why they arise are
generally clear to everyone. One’s Identity—as an individual or a
community—is clear, the convictions that constitute that
identity are coherent, and the life that follows from these
convictions is determined. When one of these communities
breaks down, we can say how it has failed. So even though
there are many competing communities, identities, or positions,
pluralism describes a situation in which these competing
outlooks are coherent and clearly deﬁned.

MacIntyre argues that characterizing our culture in terms of
pluralism is misleading and obscures the real challenge that
we face. In his analysis, Western Culture is fragmented, not
pluralistic. It is incoherent; our lives are lived piecemeal, not
whole. The disagreements that we have are difficult to
resolve because we cannot locate them within some coherent
position or community. We do not live in a world ﬁlled with
competing outlooks; we live in a world that has fallen apart.

Although pluralism is often used to describe the new
situation and challenges facing the church, it more nearly
describes the world in which I grew up in the American
Midwest and South in the 1950s and 1960s. We are used to
thinking of American Culture in the 1950’s and early 1960s
as monolithic. However, in those years, we were all acutely
aware that we lived in a world of competing communities and
traditions. The melting pot was full of unmeltable goods.

In order to live faithfully today, we must recognize that
we have not moved from a monolithic world into a
pluralistic world; rather, we have moved from a time
when our communities were relatively coherent and
clear to a time when our communities and traditions
have become fragmented. Certainly, some coherent
communities still exist, but these are communities that
for various reasons have not been a part of our cultural
change. For example, the Amish, as well as Hasidic
Jews, remain relatively coherent as communities
because they have not participated in the larger culture.
Recent Muslim immigrants have coherent communities
because their participation in Western Culture is
relatively recent.

The church in the West is fragmented because its life has for so
long been intertwined with the larger culture. As that culture
has fragmented, so also has the church. MacIntyre’s narrative of
this fragmentation centers on morality He shows that moral
schemes that were previously coherent depend for their
coherence upon a conceptual scheme that gave a description of
(1) “where” humans are on the moral landscape, (2) where they
should be, and (3) how to get from where they are to where
they should be. In a lengthy and powerful analysis, MacIntyre
shows how and why modern culture abandoned the second
element of this scheme—any convictions about where humans
should be—our telos (goal, purpose, end). Once any notion of
telos is abandoned, we are left with where humans are and what
we should do, but what we should do—morality—makes no
sense apart from telos. Therefore our moral language, practice,
and concepts linger as fragments of a previously coherent
account. As time goes on, these moral fragments appear
arbitrary—mere exercises of power or expressions of emotion.

This same fragmentation has deeply affected the moral
life of the church, but its effects are not limited to
morality. The entire life of the church has been deeply
affected by this fragmentation. If we cling to pluralism
and neglect fragmentation as a description of our
situation, we will become more vulnerable over time and
will cease to live and witness faithfully. We will have the
appearance of life and health, but it will be only
simulacra of the church’s calling.
Selected, from Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World

Why Al Qaeda Supports the Emergent Church
By Frank Pastore
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The greatest threat to world peace is radical Islam. If
not for the United States, millions more would be
suffering under the tyranny of sharia law all over the
world. Our Muslim enemies know post-Christian Europe
has already lost the will to fight. Africa, Asia, and South
America seem to be already lost. Russia, China, and
India would rather trade than fight…for now. And the
United Nations continues to be irrelevant.

Only the United States, and more specifically, only the
conservative, evangelical Christians of America are who
stand between radical Islam and their quest for global
domination.
If the world is to be saved from Muslim conquest, it will
be America who does it. And if America is to be saved,
only conservatism can do it. And if conservatism is to be
saved, it will be those Bible-believing patriots who do it–
those conservative, evangelical Christians who are the
bedrock of the American way of life.

Why? Because only Christianity has the intellectual and
spiritual horsepower to defeat radical Islam and prevent
the world from returning to the darkness of the 7th
century. After all, the story of the birth and growth of
Western Civilization is pretty much the story of the birth
and growth of Christianity. The divide between East and
West today, fundamentally, is the divide between Islam
and Christianity. Christians and Muslims know this, it’s
the secularists who don’t get it–or at least won’t admit
it.

That’s why anything that helps to further separate the
West from its Biblical roots ultimately weakens the
resolve of the West to fight. Anything that helps the
ACLU to further de-Christianize America, to further
silence the Christian voice like the current hate-crimes
legislation or the fairness doctrine, and to further
weaken the Church and devalue the Bible as the
religious left has done for decades, are things that
empower our enemies and weaken our allies.
A post-Christian, post-modern, secular-socialist America
will be no match for a radical Islam fueled by petro-
dollars and threatening the use of nuclear weapons.
But an America where the church is strong, resolute,
and courageous? That’s a different thing altogether.
Which is why al Qaeda supports the emergent church.

The emergent church is an ally in the war against radical
Islam–al Qaeda’s ally. Not in the sense they are
supplying bullets and bombs to Osama, of course, but in
the sense they are weakening our conviction to fight.
…The term “emergent church” refers to a loose
association of people who share common values and
attitudes toward, well, everything. It’s Christianity for
postmoderns who don’t like truth, knowledge, science,
authority, doctrine, institutions, or religion. They claim
absolute or objective truth is unknowable, that the only
“truth” that can be known is rooted in communities of
shared subjective experience–the infamous “it’s my
truth” of relativism.

And if nothing is objectively true, if no text has a
meaning independent of the reader, then the truth
claims in the Bible are no more authoritative than the
funny papers. Hence, there’s no emphasis on core
beliefs, essential doctrines, statements of faith or the
institutions built to defend and propagate them–
especially the institutional church and its Bible colleges
and seminaries.
… The emergent church and its allies on the religious left
are to Christianity what termites are to wood. They
devour it from the inside out, little bit by little bit, and
you don’t notice it until it’s too late–unless you look for
the droppings.
They’re leaving lots of droppings if you only have eyes
to see.

…It’s time to call these people out from the shadows and
expose them to the light of public scrutiny.
Their unwillingness to distinguish truth from error, right
from wrong, and good from evil leave them intellectually
immobilized to resist the encroachment of false teaching
and heresy, and even incapable of knowing the good
guys from the bad guys in the war for the free world.
The whole point of terrorism is to destroy the will of the
enemy to fight.
Whose side are they on, anyway?

What Yogi Berra said about baseball is true of this
war against radical Islam: “Half this game is 90%
mental.”
Yogi knew this. Osama knows this. I wonder if the
“emergents” do?

The Frank Pastore Show is heard in Los Angeles
weekday afternoons on 99.5 KKLA and on the web at
kkla.com, and is the winner of the 2006 National
Religious Broadcasters Talk Show of the Year. Frank
is a former major league pitcher with graduate
degrees in both philosophy of religion and political
philosophy.

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