Two Kinds of Pluralism
8 June 2006 by Gil
Many of you will know that I have an ongoing interest in the question of how to live as a Christian in a pluralistic society. On the surface it seems like an impossibility. Ideological pluralism rules out any kind of exclusive claim on the ground that, given a plurality of opinions, it is arrogant to assume that yours happens to be the right one. Christians claim that Jesus Christ is the way not merely one way, the truth as opposed to an approximation. The two views seem to be irreconcileable.
Is there any way forward? Are the only options a rigid fundamentalism that ignores the issues of plurality and waves the Bible in the air in response or a tepid liberalism that ignores the real truth claims within Christianity and chooses to focus on issues that are more palatable to the contemporary pluralists?
Newbigin has again been helpful for me here. He distinguishes between two kinds of pluralism: Agnostic Pluralism and Committed Pluralism. Agnostic Pluralism is the kind in which, “truth is regarded as unknowable, in which there are no criteria for judging different kinds of belief and behaviour.” We, as contemporary Western cultures have clearly decided that there is no criteria for judging between religious beliefs so we have opted for the idea that none of them can be true (or at best, they can only be equally quaint).
Committed Pluralism is, “neither purely objective nor purely subjective but… that which is available to the person who is personally and responsibly committed to seeking the truth and publicly stating his (sic) findings.” I like this vision of pluralism because it manages to do what Agnostic Pluralism cannot. It maintains the recognition that plurality exists and is a serious matter for religious belief while at the same time holding onto the belief that there is truth to be found, it is ‘out there,’ so to speak, and that we as human beings have the responsibility to seek it and to talk about it. In short, this position requires us to invest ourselves in the process of knowing. It will not allow us to retreat into the cowardly position of saying we can’t know anything, nor will it allow us to dismiss the views of others as ‘wrong’ without listening to them.
For Newbigin the issue comes down to personal responsibility. “Both objectivism and subjectivism are ways of evading personal responsiblity for knowing the truth.” Objectivism is evasive because it sees reason functioning as a ‘neutral third party,’ a guarantee of ‘rightness’ that ignores the unprovable assumptions that lie behind all forms of knowledge. Subjectivism is evasive because it allows us to take real and significant differences between people and trivialize them by saying that truth is only a matter of personal preference and makes no claims upon people independent of themselves.
The key for Committed Pluralism is the willingness of people to take personal responsibility for their views, their ‘faith,’ to use a loaded word, and to test the coherence of these views against the reality of lived experience and the contradictory views of others. With this personal responsibility must come both the conviction that says, ‘I believe this and I believe it to be true for all people,’ and the humility that says, ‘But I only know in part and I could be missing something important.’ This is the personal risk of knowing.
I think that is a helpful distinction (btwn te pluralisms). Is there room for confidence in the face of this humility? There certainly seems to be little room for certainty.
We all have to admit that we approach truth subjectively, so in order to make any coherent statement about the application of things considered to be objectively universal we must acknowledge that this objectivity is itself limited by our even collective subjectivity.
I have a question for you though.
What place, if any, do experiences have in the nature of truth? Do they serve as a confirmation of truth? Can they ever have any objective reliability?
i would like to borrow this book once available…
Gil, I’m way too tired to even be writing this, but you’ve got me thinking so I’ve got to ask you about this post! The little that we’ve talked about this idea in class has really intrigued me, but I always feel like maybe I’m missing something or not fully grasping the concept. Though I realise the importance of committed belief, the idea of committed pluralism always seems to lead to a place I’m not sure I agree with. If our faith is rooted in commitment and experience, then isn’t it all just relative? Your faith is true for you because you’re committed to it, and my faith works for me because I’m committed to it. Once again we’re drowning in pluralistic relativism. I don’t think this is what Newbiggin intends to say, but I don’t see where his arguement refutes this conclusion. Perhaps you could clarify a bit?
Dale,
I think experience has a role to play although not a determinative role. The line between objectivity and subjectivity lies in our willingness to talk together and test our ideas and see if they are coherent - coherent in the sense of helping us make sense of our world with the available evidence and the minds God has given us. So experience plays a part because it is what each of us, willingly or unwillingly, is called to interpret.
Nicole,
I don’t think I would want to say that it is our commitment that determines whether or not our beliefs are true. Instead committed pluralism is a recognition of a fact: we live in a plural world with a plurality of competing truth claims. Our calling is to own our beliefs as ‘true’ (as opposed to a ‘whatever works for you’ approach) and to test them in dialogue with others. So our faith is not rooted in experience and commitment but neither is it rooted in a rationalism that sees ‘proof’ as a necessary criterion for belief. We believe and act as if our ideas are true, we test and evaluate in light of reason and experience and all the while admit the possibility that there is no absolute guarantee that we are right. That is the risk.
“We believe and act as if our ideas are true, we test and evaluate in light of reason and experience and all the while admit the possibility that there is no absolute guarantee that we are right.”
“fact: we live in a plural world with a plurality of competing truth claims.”
Is there no absolute guarantee that you are right about this “fact”? Is this “fact” considered by you to be a matter of “faith-based” subjectivity instead of identified as objective knowledge?
I see a contradiction here.
Gil, this is wonderfully scary. Really. I have been trying to contribute my own thoughts to this as well and if I am hearing correctly, this commitment has implications for Christians I have not even begun to explore.
Such as evangelism. What is our evangelism was coated with this commitment to a personal faith that is “true for everyone” AND the humility to accept that we might not be able to see the whole picture? Perhaps conversion is something that two people do together, for as I convert someone, I am not arrogant to think that this new birth should not also convert me.
This must affect the classroom as well?
Jeff,
I agree that this has huge implications, especially in the area we have traditionally called ‘evangelism’. I certainly think that the model that assumes ‘we have the answers and our job is merely to dispense them to ignorant pagans’ is way off the mark. I like your idea of ‘conversion’ (a word that needs a serious makeover) as something that happens as people talk to each other. There’s something right about the idea of ‘new birth’ as a constant rebirth that seems to ring true. But I don’t think that this precludes one party having the answer that is worth exploring.
This absolutely has implications for the classroom. I think all of us learn best when we have a stake in the process. Whenever a student is seen as a passive receiver of information then learning is less likely and less rewarding. Yet we still have teachers, we still seek out the opinions of those who we feel are further along the way than we are. The idea of education as collaboration runs the risk of an unhealthy egalitarianism that says that every opinion is of equal value, no matter how ridiculous.