Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 36:2 (Jun 1993)
Article: Plurality, Ambiguity, And Despair In Contemporary Theology
Author: Craig M. Gay

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JETS 36:2 (June 1993) p. 209

Plurality, Ambiguity, And Despair
In Contemporary Theology

Craig M. Gay*

Social change is often reflected in the changing meanings of words. Several centuries ago Martin Luther defined faith as “a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.”1 Much more recently Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary (1977) defined faith in terms of “firm belief “ and “full certitude and confidence.” At the moment, however, faith seems to connote “preference” or “choice” much more than full certitude and confidence, and the use of the term, even by the Christian, seems to suggest more about the chooser than about that which is chosen. Apparently the logic of choice and/or preference, now implied by the word “faith,” has acquired a quiet and subtle shift of emphasis away from the object of faith (i.e. what it is that is believed) toward our choice to believe. Of course such a shift threatens the idea of Christian orthodoxy in quite a direct way, for the very term “orthodoxy” means to stress the enduring and unchanging quality of what is believed—that is, of the objective content of faith—and it literally loses its sense in the context of a shift toward the subjective. Nevertheless in the contemporary situation it seems we have (albeit reluctantly and perhaps even unwittingly) chosen what might be called the grammar of preference with respect to religion in general and Christian orthodoxy in particular.

The most commonly cited reason for adopting a grammar of preference with respect to religion, of course, is that we live in a pluralistic society—that is, a society in which there is literally a kind of competition between worldviews.2 Such competition places us in a situation in which it is, at the very least, impolite and perhaps even impossible to speak dogmatically about religious belief. Indeed the very word “dogmatic” has become synonymous with the vices of intolerance and bigotry and is therefore commonly contrasted with the contemporary virtues of openmindedness, tolerance, “willingness to dialogue,” and so forth. Modern sociocultural pluralism, in other words, has rendered the logic of preference increasingly imperative and ipso facto has rendered the notion of orthodoxy increasingly untenable.

* Craig Gay is assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies at Regent College, 5800 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC V6T 2E4, Canada.

JETS 36:2 (June 1993) p. 210

In the following I want to briefly examine the phenomenon of modern sociocultural pluralism and its impact on Christ...

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