How many times has TLC circled this same question? At some point it starts to look like the endless processing is the point. The irony is that revisiting and gestating the same questions isn’t some neutral exercise. It is the mechanism of pluralism doing exactly what it is designed to do. And for that mechanism to work, no fact or truth can ever be allowed to resolve. Infinite oscillation, unsuspectingly waiting for authority to arrive. Athens did it first.The cohesion pluralism (as an ethos) produces is always thin and unstable. It can’t hold without eventually sliding into control. That’s the irony. Pluralism promises peace and safety, but by refusing judgment it guarantees that someone or something will eventually have to manage the chaos. The tyranny you, Luke, claim to be trying to prevent through pluralism is actually what invites it in. To prevent that, there needs to be an effort to channel all that exestential angst upward in faith rather than outword in group processing.Check out my longer post, I try to tease my thoughts on this some more. Leave feedback, I'd appreciate it.
First comment:
I think what you're really asking is whether pluralism and communion with God is simultaneously possible in this age. Short answer from me: no. Absolutizing pluralism, as you're arguing for, Luke, creates an authority vacuum that nullifies the New Covenant. It's less Christian and more Athenian in appraoch.
For genuinely incompatible truth claims to coexist without any resolution, one condition has to be met, and that's that no transcendent authority can arbitrate between them. Judgment has to be suspended. Once God's no longer allowed to decide, all that left is dialogue, consensus, inclusion, and relational harmony. In other words, horizontal processing. Pluralism isn’t neutral. It sneakily installs a new highest good which ends up being peace and safety over truth and obedience.
I recommend looking into ancient Athens' intellectual culture. Athens thought themselves to model humility in their openness and inclusion to all ideas but Acts 17 doesn’t paint Athens as open-minded virtue, it portrays it as spiritually/existentially exhausted. They spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something novel. They had many altars, but no set spiritual authority, and most importantly no source of repentance. The forum became the church and conversation the liturgy. The apostle Paul’s speech is what broke the pluralism by reintroducing authority i.e., one Creator, one judge, and one resurrected man. And the moment authority re-enters the picture, pluralism fractures, but as we saw with Paul, not before the maternal immune system flares up and mocked him and later (Ephesus and Diana) pushed him out of the city. The only way pluralism can survive is if Hebraic, not Greek, repentance, resurrection, and judgment are treated abstractly or not taken seriously at all.
Even if people say convictions are possible to be preserved, pluralism still creates a slow drip decay in conviction and enthusiasm for truth. Social pressure attacks strong assertive claims that don't flatter the idol of belonging to avoid offense, because belonging is totallized as the highest good. Moral sensibilities in that sense get rounded more and more to preserve relationship. In other words, truth's witness becomes private to keep the public square happy and calm. Belonging then becomes the sacred cow. At that point, the community's no longer cohered around God's revealed truth; it’s organized around cohesion to community itself.
So is pluralism actually possible? Yes, but its only ever temporary and shallow and there are always dire consequences. True pluralism requires vertical authority to be absent, leaving only horizontal processing between perspectives. Like Athens in Acts 17, this creates a gestational womb-like space that feels intimate and peaceful, but over time it infantalizes us and erodes godly conviction. Beliefs have to be held at surface level, while belonging becomes the organizing principle. Once belonging becomes sacred, no real transcendent authority can govern the space without being seen as a threat. At that point, peace replaces obedience, and pluralism quietly becomes an idol and the ensuring choas created a vaccum that eventually has to be mediated by an external authority. Rome in Greece's case but then plurality was localized. Now, the internet is globalizing it. What kind of authority is capable of governing global chaos? An Anti-Christ spirit? Mark of the Beast? Perhaps....(had to catastrophize troll. Half-joking though).
The best approach is to maintain distinct ideological camps that protect conscience and reduce confusion, while encouraging honest dialogue between them. The goal isn’t to prioritize belonging over clarity, or clarity over belonging, but to root both in God above. This requires a primary focus on repentance, direct New Covenant direct revelation, and, through that, reconciliation with true authority (John 14:26), which each person has to pursue individually. Endless horizontal processing cannot produce divine reconciliation; in fact it distracts from it. Channel all that exestential anxiety not into community but faith becasue community can't save. Belonging and clarity naturally flow from revelation grounded in faith.
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