Criswell Theological Review 7.2 (1994) 15-39
[Copyright © 1994 by
digitally prepared for use at
Gordon and
THE CHALLENGE FROM
THE PREACHING OF THE
GOSPEL TO PLURALISM*
D. A.
In my first
lecture I outlined some of the challenges addressed by
contemporary forms of pluralism to the preaching of the gospel. Now I
want to
change direction, and suggest some ways that contemporary
preaching of
the gospel should respond to that challenge, and offer
some
fundamental challenges of its own.
Not long before he died, M. Warren
wrote:1
Reacting, and reacting rightly,
against the dogmatic triumphalism of much
past Christian approach to men of other faiths, it is all
too easy to swing to
the other extreme and talk happily of different roads to the summit,
as if
Jesus were in no particular and distinctive sense "the Way,
the Truth, and
the Life," Of course where this point is reached, the Great
Commission is
tacitly, if not explicitly, held to be
indefinitely in suspense if not quite
otiose. This is a view forcefully propounded by
some Christians holding
professorial Chairs in
courtesy always to preclude contradiction? Is
choice now just a matter of
taste, no longer a response to an absolute demand? Is the Cross on
really no more than a confusing roundabout sign
pointing in every direc-
tion, or is it still the place where all men
are meant to kneel?
It will come
as no surprise to you that
with a
wholehearted "Yes!" But in that case it is important to think
* This is the second of two lectures
read for the annual Criswell Theological Lec-
tures, February, 1994, This material has been
expanded and further developed in the au-
thor's The Gagging of God: Christianity
Confronts Pluralism (
forthcoming).
1 Max A. C.
ton,
1976) 150-51.
16 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
through what
form a faithful and wise articulation of this exclusive
gospel will
take as it confronts postmodern perils. In this brief lecture,
perhaps I
may venture six points.
I. We must
develop an array of responses to the new hermeneutic
and to deconstruction
The severity of the challenge
becomes clear when we picture two
quite
different Christian apologists approaching a thoughtful decon-
structionist. The first Christian is an evidentialist. She may begin by
marshalling
various arguments for the existence of God, and proceed
to
demonstrate that the only adequate explanation of the biblical ac-
counts of
the resurrection of Jesus and of the change in his disciples
is that
Jesus in fact did rise from the dead. The deconstructionist lis-
tens with
interest, but can find other explanations for the early belief
in
Jesus' resurrection. More importantly, he insists that his Christian
interlocutor's passion to convert him is itself a function of the rather
closed and
old-fashioned society from which she hails. He is courteous,
but
unimpressed.
The second Christian apologist is one form of fideist,
or presuppo-
sitionalist. He has a name, partly because I cannot
improve on the tes-
timony of this man. J. Cooper2 was a
philosophy major at Calvin
College in the 1960s. There he learned to attack the alleged autonomy,
neutrality, and
vaunted self-sufficiency of all human reasoning. The
aim was
to hoist modernists with their own petard. This approach is
fundamental to
A. Kuyper's discernment of antithesis in science, to
H. Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique of theoretical
thought, to Van
Til's presuppositionalism, and even to the Reformed foundationalism
of A. Plantinga and
gan doctoral study under P. Ricoeur at the
story may
be continued in his own words:3
Gathering courage [at a Ricoeur seminar
on hermeneutics], I trotted out
my best Reformed arguments that reason and knowledge are not neutral
but dependent upon basic commitments, presuppositions, and
perspectives.
I was ready for a fight, but everyone just stared at me as though
I had an-
nounced that the Pope is Catholic. "Yes,
yes... go on," Ricoeur encouraged,
interested in the validation of presuppositions. But
I had nothing left ex-
cept a personal testimony about my religious
beliefs. My best Reformed
philosophical arguments were mere truisms to these
people. I'll never for-
get the consternation I felt.
2 John
W. Cooper, "Reformed Apologetics and the Challenge of Post-Modern Rela-
tivism," CTJ 28 (1993) 108-20, esp.
108-9.
3 Cooper, 109.
D. A.
Carson: PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL To PLURALISM 17
Times are changing. Modernism is dying,
though its strength is not
completely spent. By now the announcement of a new
outlook, something
called "post-modernism," has become a cliche. . . . At the heart of the new
mood are principled pluralism and radical relativism.
This does
not mean that evidentialism has nothing useful to
say, or that
a
Reformed apologetic is entirely invalid. I will not attempt to arbitrate
on that
ancient debate here, except peripherally. It does mean, how-
ever,
that "standard" approaches to apologetics simply do not touch the
intelligent,
committed deconstructionist.
Among the responses I have found useful are the following five.
1.
Acknowledge some truth in the new hermeneutic, some validity in
deconstruction
There is of course irony in acknowledging (objective) truth in the
new
hermeneutic, but it will almost certainly bypass the person to
whom you
are speaking. In any case, your acknowledgment is not a
cheap,
psychological ploy to bring the other person "on side,” a mere
courtesy
perhaps: it is, rather, an important
obligation, for there are in
fact important things to learn.
All of us see things only in part, and never without some measure
of
distortion. To say this is not (I shall shortly argue) to succumb to ab-
solute
relativism. It is, rather, to admit a truth that many have recog-
nized, but which has become clearer owing not
least to our experience
of
empirical pluralism. Each of us is finite; none of us displays the at-
tribute of
omniscience. Our beliefs are shaped in part by our culture,
language,
heritage, and community.
Of course, this is one of the reasons why the subject of context-
ualization has become ubiquitous in recent years. It
has long been
recognized that
new churches, to become mature, must become self-
governing,
self-financing, and self-propagating: those were the measures
of the
old indigenous principle. Contextualization takes a big step fur-
ther. It insists that believers must "do
theology" from within their own
culture, and
not simply learn a system of theology developed in an-
other
culture. For most of us, I think, this has become almost axiomatic.
We are aware
of the abuses to which certain forms of contextualiza-
tion can lead, and about which I will say more
in a moment, but we
cannot
reasonably doubt the importance of the phenomenon.
To take some easy examples: Believers in sub-Saharan Black Africa
are
likely to be less individualistic than their Western counterparts, to
avoid deep
dichotomies between the natural world and the spiritual
world, and
to think of death without the taboos that our culture places
on it.
These three cultural factors alone will have various influences on
their
theology, as they develop it from studying the Bible. They will
likely find
in Paul more corporate metaphors for the church than we
18 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
do, and
prove quicker at living them out. They will have less trouble
with a
comprehensive doctrine of providence, and will talk about death
more
frankly. Living as many Africans do in a still profoundly oral
culture,
they often prove more able to read and preach narrative parts
of
Scripture sensitively and tellingly; correspondingly, their ability
to
handle discourse is not impressive. Most westerners have inverse
strengths and
weaknesses. It is not surprising, then, that we shall de-
velop our respective theologies along somewhat
different lines. If the
new
hermeneutic helps us along the path of humility, that is surely a
good
thing;
Indeed, in certain respects believers can embrace pluralism more
lavishly than
the secularists can. Our heavenly Father created a won-
derfully diverse world: let us adore him for it.4 He
makes each snow-
flake
different; we make ice-cubes. Quite clearly, God likes diversity
in the
color of human skin--he has made people wonderfully diverse.
Similarly,
apart from the wretched sinfulness endemic to all cultures,
one must
assume that God likes cultural diversity as well. In the realm
of
knowing, we join the experts of deconstruction and of the new her-
meneutic in insisting on human finiteness; more,
we go further and in-
sist on human sinfulness. The noetic effects of sin are so severe that
we
culpably distort the data brought to us by our senses to make it fit
into
self-serving grids. We are not only finite, on many fronts we are
blind.
Moreover, we need to insist that all topics we deal with are nec-
essarily culture-laden. Language itself is a feature of culture, and there
are few
topics we can examine very far without resorting to language.
I simply
cannot escape my cultural locatedness. Recognizing
the need
to
preserve absolutes, yet perceiving the overarching and frankly rel-
ativizing influence of culture, some Christians
have sought to escape
the
problem by suggesting that some core of basic Christian truths tran-
scends culture. Take, for instance, the work of
C. Kraft5--an example I
have developed
more fully elsewhere.6 Kraft thinks of the Bible as a
case-book. The
wise pastor or missionary applies the appropriate case
to the
culture at hand. Thus, in a society that is polygamous (his ex-
ample), it
might be wise to begin with OT polygamy, perhaps with
David and
Solomon and their many wives, rather than with the mo-
4 See
some of the opening remarks by Jonathan F. Frothe,
"Confessing Christ in a
Pluralistic Age," Concordia Journal 16 (1990) 217-30.
5 In
particular, his Christianity in Culture: A Study in Dynamic Biblical Theolo-
gizing in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1980).
6 D.
A.
Horizon,"
The Church in the Bible and the World, ed. D. A. Carson (
D. A.
Carson: PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL To PLURALISM 19
nogamous ideal set out in the NT. When pressed to
articulate what, if
any,
fundamental truths Christianity embraces that must be pressed
on
every culture, Kraft suggests there is a handful of non-negotiable,
transcultural truths, such as "Jesus is
Lord."
But Kraft, I think, has not gone far enough, and too far. He has
not gone
far enough in that even so basic a confession as "Jesus is
Lord"
cannot escape culture. For a start, it is in English. Moreover, we
English-speaking
Western Christians adopt common assumptions about
the
referent of the word "Jesus" (though Jehovah's Witnesses might
not
agree), and probably want to define "Lord" as well. For example,
the
instructed Christian will remember that "Lord" is often used in the
Septuagint
to refer to YHWH, and suspect that the confession "Jesus is
Lord"
includes not-very-subtle hints of Jesus' deity. Not all who take
the
confession on their lips will be saying so much; they will not be
adequately
instructed. But the problem is still more complex. If the
confession were
translated into Thai and uttered in a
it
would probably be understood to imply that Jesus is inferior to
Gautama the Buddha. This is because in Buddhist thought the
highest
state of
exaltation is reached when nothing at all can be predicated
about the
person: the most exalted individual is neither hot nor cold,
good nor
bad, and so on. To predicate that Jesus is Lord, therefore, is to
imply that
Jesus is inferior to Gautama the Buddha, about whom noth-
ing can be predicated. Thus not even
"Jesus is Lord" can escape the
grasp of
culture. A similar analysis could be undertaken for any other
fundamental
truth that Kraft or anyone else advances as something
that
transcends all cultures. If truth can transcend culture (and I shall
argue that
in certain respects it does), it does not do so in any simple
way. In
this sense, Kraft does not go far enough.
But in another sense, Kraft goes much too far. If we can establish
that
truth can be objective and transcendent even
though it is neces-
sarily
expressed in culture-laden ways and believed or known by fi-
nite,
culturally-restricted people--a perspective I shall briefly develop
in a
few moments-then if the proposition "Jesus is Lord" can be
judged
absolute, even though it is expressed in culture-laden terms,
there is
nothing intrinsically inappropriate about the conclusion that
countless
other propositions may also be absolute, even though each of
them is
culture-laden.
This may become clearer if we analyze a little further what we
mean by
saying that "Jesus is Lord" is part of the culture-transcending
heritage of
the church everywhere. I think I mean something like this:
The semantic
context of "Jesus is Lord" as expressed and understood
by an
English-speaking believer who has at least some rudimentary
knowledge of
the Bible and Christian theology must be grasped and
20 CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
believed by
men and women everywhere in every culture, however it
is
expressed and articulated within each culture. Of course, there are
all
sorts of ambiguities about this way of wording things. But my point
is that
if linguistics has taught us anything, it has taught us that what-
ever can
be said in one language can be said in another, even if not in
the same
way and brevity. What I as a Western believer mean by
"Jesus
is Lord" can be conveyed in Thai, to a Thai Buddhist. But it
will not
be conveyed, in the first instance, by a mere slogan. Christian
understanding of the confession is dependent upon an entire world-
view that
takes in a personal/transcendent God, the revelation of the
Scripture, understanding of who Jesus is, and so on. The initial Thai
misunderstanding turns on another entire worldview: an essentially
pantheistic view
of God, radically different understanding of revelation,
relative or
perhaps complete ignorance of Jesus, and so forth. To ex-
plain to
the Thai what I mean by "Jesus is Lord" can be done, but not
easily, not
quickly, and not with mere slogans. Once there is a con-
fessional Thai church, of course, the cultural
barriers inherent in all
Christian
witness may be crossed more quickly.
I have not set up English as the necessary medium by which all
other
expressions of "Jesus is Lord" are to be tested. That would be the
rankest
cultural imperialism. I have used English in my example merely
to
personalize my argument. All I am saying is that if there is an objec-
tive standard of truth out there, the ways in
which we confess it will
vary
enormously from culture to culture. Of course, all of this presup-
poses that
there is some sense to the notion of objective truth in the
first
place, but I will press that point in a moment.
My first point, then, is that Christians have a vested interest in
acknowledging where the new hermeneutic and deconstruction say
important and
true things. Moreover, by acknowledging these things
we may
gain a hearing among some who would otherwise shut us out.
2. It is
vital to see that some deconstructionists slant the debate by
appealing to indefensible antitheses
They are inclined to do this in one of two ways.
First, they may offer either absolute knowledge or complete rela-
tivism. The criterion is made rigid and extreme.
As Juhl puts it, "Is this
one of
those cases in which an absolute demand has been imposed on
a
concept, in this case the concept of meaning, such that by its very
nature our
language is incapable of satisfying the demand?"7
7 P.
D. Juhl, "Playing with Texts: Can Deconstruction
Account for Critical Practice?"
Criticism and Critical Theory, ed. Jeremy Hawthorn (London: Edward
Arnold, 1984) 61.
D. A.
Carson: PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL To PLURALISM 21
An example of the difficulties inherent in language is commonly
drawn from
Archie Bunker. His wife asks him if he wants his bowling
shoes
laced over or under. He offhandedly replies, "What's the differ-
ence?" So she tries to explain, in great
detail, while the audience is
howling with
laughter because we perceive that what he means by
"What's
the difference ?" is not "I do not
understand the difference and
would like
you to explain it to me," but simply "I don't give a damn."
Yet from
this simple example the deconstructionist P. de Man, through
complex
reasoning, finally concludes, "Rhetoric radically suspends logic
and
opens up vertiginous possibilities of referential aberration."8
One
wants to
say, "Give me a break." Archie's wife may not have under-
stood the
possibility of a double meaning, but the audience does, or it
would not
laugh. How does one responsibly move from a simple ambi-
guity, created for the sake of a joke and
instantly understood by a
laughing
audience, to "vertiginous possibilities of referential aberra-
tion"? We are being manipulated by a
rigid and unacceptable antithesis.
Second, some deconstructionists lace their arguments with manip-
ulative emotional appeals. Thus Derrida, in one
of his much-quoted
essays,9
contrasts two interpretations of interpretation. The first is the
"Rousseauist" version, which is "sad, negative,
nostalgic, and guilty" and
"which is always turned towards the presence, lost or
impossible, of
the
absent origin." The other is the Nietzschean
version, "the joyous
affirmation of
the freeplay of the world, and without truth, without
origin."
As I. Wright comments, the sole purpose of such passages is "to
stigmatize
origin-oriented hermeneutics [that is, a system of interpre-
tation that insists there must be some
connection between text and
authorial intent] as fuddy-duddy."10 It is very hard to avoid the impres-
sion that this shout of praise is in behalf of
solipsism and intellectual
nihilism.
3. There are
some models of approaching texts that glean the best from
the new
hermeneutic, but do not destroy all possibility of absolute truth
In other words, there are models that allow for the valid insights
of
the new
hermeneutic and of deconstruction without falling off the end
into the
extreme relativism that characterizes many of its proponents.
Gadamer
spoke of Horizontsentfremdung and Horizontsverschmelzung,
8
Cited by Juhl, 62-63.
9
Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sci-
ences; in Richard Macksey and Eugenio Do