Christian friends, it is a privilege to speak at this conference once again because each year it examines a subject that is important for the Christian gospel and the church.

Changeless Gospel but Changing “World”
We have been reminded that the Christian church has been given a mission to all nations by the Lord Jesus Christ. She does not need permission from secular powers to engage in it seeing that Jesus has been given “all authority in heaven and earth” by God, his Father. In addition, she should not feel alone as she sets about it in a fallen world because the Lord promises her his cooperating presence from age to age. By means of the gospel that she bears, the Lord will gather his innumerable elect from every kindred, tribe, and tongue. There is no plan B. Echoing Isaiah, the Apostle Peter says that the gospel word “lives and abides forever” and the Apostle Paul speaks of “the everlasting gospel of the blessed God” to be made known “to all nations for the obedience of faith.” Consequently, the Christian gospel and the church’s mission are unchanging.

But the world does change, not, of course, in the sense that the basic condition of men and women before God does, but in the sense that ideas and values, customs and practices—all that makes up the blessed word “culture” —hardly seem to be constant for the duration of one person’s lifetime. Many of us, and not only the oldest, can say “things are not what they used to be.”

What then is distinctive about the ethos of our time and place? It is summed up by the one word “pluralism.” We must consider what this is and how our unchanging message and mission is to be related to it, bearing in mind that it is to people that we minister and not to ideologies. Ideas are important but nowhere near as important as people. It is people we want to see changed and not ideas defeated. Our title tells us that what is ruling the roost is “Pluralism.” What is that?

What is Pluralism?
It has been well said that plurality is a fact but pluralism is a way of regarding and responding to that fact. Sadly, this distinction is not uniformly used in the literature but we will employ it.

Pluralism is not a synonym for plurality
Many countries now contain people from diverse nationalities and cultures and that constitutes social plurality. This is recognized and even eulogized, as in so many cases it results in the enrichment of the body politic. Subject to the law of the land, those languages and traditions are regarded as contributing to the common good and provision made for them. That is a kind of pluralism and it can generate tension at times as we all know. It can also be extended to religions in countries where religious liberty is enshrined. That is also a kind of pluralism—a way of coping with variety and harnessing it for the common good. Plurality is a fact and pluralism is a way of regarding it. But there is another way, another kind of pluralism—one that relates particularly to religions. It is neither a policy of laissez faire or of true toleration.

Pluralism is the antonym of exclusivism
The adjective “pluralistic” which we have in our title seems to have been coined as a rejoinder to the term “exclusivist” which is also a way of regarding religious plurality. “Exclusivism” is a term for the way in which the church throughout her history has regarded and related to the other religions of mankind. In summary it is that salvation is obtained only by faith in Christ and that it is therefore necessary for the gospel to be preached by the church to all mankind. (“Ecclesiocentric” is a more recent term for this view).

By contrast a ‘pluralistic’ view of religions says the opposite. At its very best, that is among those who make a Christian profession, it claims that the gospel is not necessary for true faith to exist, that Christ’s merit is available without gospel truth being known and that God’s saving grace works in people’s minds and hearts through their experience of fallen life in the created world. This has been described as Christian Universalism (see the book by Visser’t Hooft in Appendix C on page 9). But that distinction has not held because syncretism and even paganism have been included within its ambit.

The kind of Pluralism with which we must concern ourselves is one that regards all religions as both valid and valuable. In his book The Gagging of God, Don Carson maintains that Pluralism’s advocates declare that “any notion that a particular ideological/religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong.” He then adds, “The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism.”

Pluralism is therefore an “ology” every bit as much as “anthropology,” “Christology,” or “missiology” is and what is more is it affects them all. Those like us who not only affirm the importance of “faith” but the existence of “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” have a major challenge on our hands in terms of the mission assigned to us. Ever since the Fall there have been “Gods many and Lords many” as the KJV renders 1 Corinthians 8:6 and in such environments the people of God have had to maintain the distinctiveness of their own faith and life. When this stress has become acute it is usually because of the church’s weakness rather than the strength of the assault by the unbelieving world. We can call to mind how Yahwism was challenged by Baalism, or nature worship in the time of Hosea for example, and how a mixture of Judaism and Gentile mystery religions threatened Christianity in Colosse in the time of Paul. That is what is at stake today.