Section Four: Reinterpreting the Pluralist Impulse

Viewing the Canon as a divinely authorized drama allows us to view the pluralist impulse in a very different light. Far from capturing the pheonomena of Scripture “as it really is”, the pluralized renderings of the Bible fail to capture the divine drama “as it really is.” In particular they fail to capture the ironic relationship between creation and redemption as portrayed in the Scriptures. 

When God created the world, the Scriptures record that God “spoke” it into being. The divine language created the world and by the use of this metaphor the Scriptures communicate that the world is absorbed into the Word. The Word interprets the meaning of life and the destiny of history. The active creative Word of God is the language now in which the world “makes sense.” There is a theological identity granted to the world by virtue of it being a “thing created by God”. This is to say that the world is dependent for its meaning and purpose upon its creator. 

 

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the conviction that God is one, has been both profound and of wide import. For our concerns, the central affirmation is that God’s act of creation not only defines/interprets the world but also repudiates alternative definitions/interpretations. The moral dimensions of the created order have a “fixed” character to them in virtue of their monotheistic origins.  

 

The account of the fall in Genesis 2-3 plays a critical theological role in the canon – for here the foundation was laid for the prerogative God possesses by which He determined the moral distinction between good and evil. Whatever else good and evil were, they were theological in character, namely, they were defined by reference to God. 

 

The moral fabric of the created order was torn asunder with the human refusal to center their identity in the divine being. It remains an unanswerable question as to ‘why’ Adam and Eve rejected the divine norms. But it is not unanswerable to ask what were the consequences of that rejection. Not only did humans bear the moral responsibility of that rejection, but consequently human wisdom lay in sharp contrast with divine wisdom.

 

As a result, the divine presence was removed and humankind experienced alienation from God in terms of unfulfilled desires. Their innate desire for significance was unsatisfied apart from God. Their restless wanderings for meaning and identity become an enormous burden and one to be relieved at any cost.   This search for significance is typologically related in Genesis 11 in the tower of Babel episode. This episode in the divine drama began with the collective yearnings of those on the plain of Shinar, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth”. It was an attempt to build a tower that would reach to the heavens precisely because ‘heaven’ was the only place a permanent home could be found and enduring significance gained. The judgment upon this human attempt to find significance ended not simply in the destruction of the tower, but interestingly, in the scattering of the peoples and a pluralizing of their language.   In this early pre-Israelite episode, cultural pluralism was part of the curse brought upon the people as a consequence of their attempt to define their own significance. 

 

This very same cultural pluralism became a significant thread across the remainder of the drama of redemption. Finding identity in their language, their culture, their uniqueness would inevitably bring peoples and tribes into conflict with each other. The end to these conflicts depended upon the search for meaning outside of themselves. The promise given to Abraham in Genesis 12/15 was ironic in this regard. Alongside of the very command to trust ultimately in God alone, Abram was promised that the blessing bestowed on him would be a blessing to all the nations. And here the pattern was established that God would raise a remnant through which He would bring redemption to the whole world. Divinely sanctioned exclusivism was precisely the method through which the universality of the divine grace would be manifest. But the order or direction of this pattern is most important. God was not found in the richness and diversity of cultures, but rather God disclosed his redemption through a particular people (foreshadowing the particular man, Jesus) by means of which the tearing of the human community would slowly be woven back together. Uniformity was not the intended result of this redemptive work, but rather a unity-in-diversity. After the resurrection, the diversity of cultures would be the ‘carrier’ of the radical claim of the gospel - that grace is not rooted in our earthly identity but in God’s eternal mercy. 

 

In the original proclamation of the gospel in Jerusalem, narrated in Acts 2, the curse of diverse languages is redemptively overcome.   There at Pentecost, God typologically overcame the effect of the curse of Babel through the proclamation of the one gospel in diverse languages. The miracle of “tongues” in Acts 2, was the miracle of redemption itself. It was the beginning of the restoration and reconciliation of diverse human communities to God and consequently the reconciling of these communities to each other. 

 

The overcoming of deep conflicts is very much a part of the reconciling work of the gospel. Dealing with those conflicts requires humility and wisdom in the church. It requires a vigilance against our own resentment and cynicism towards the conflicts. A gospel driven church is called to engage the cultural world of diversity on gospel-given terms rather than the terms of any secular wisdom. This calls to mind that the mission of God as manifest in Christ did not seek the subversion of cultural diversity but rather the opportunity to speak into those differences from the vantage point of forgiveness and mercy. One small suggestion close at hand from the logic of the gospel: we might deal with our differences in the radically counter-intuitive manner of showing hospitality to those with whom we have deep disagreements. By inviting the “outsider” into the common wisdom of the gospel, we may avoid thinking about our differences merely on the more natural terms of our own worldly wisdom. In this fashion the gospel interprets the pluralist impulse rather than being defined by it. 

 

 

Continue to Section Five: Whose Text? Which Redemption? Reading the Bible or Being Read by the Bible?