Right Now Counts Forever
by R.C. Sproul
The nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich
Nietzsche is famous for his declaration that "God is dead." That brief
dictum does not give the whole story. According to Nietzsche, the cause
of the Deity's demise was compassion. He said, "God is dead; He died of
pity." But before the God who was the God of Judeo-Christianity
perished, Nietzsche said that there were a multitude of deities who
existed, such as those who resided on Mount Olympus. That is, at one
time there was a plurality of gods. All of the rest of the gods
perished when one day the Jewish God, Yahweh, stood up in their
assembly and said, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Hearing
this, according to Nietzsche's satirical summary, all of the rest of
the gods and goddesses died. They died of laughter.
In our day, where pluralism reigns in the culture, there is as much
satirical hostility to the idea of one God as there was in Nietzsche's
satire. But today, that repugnance to monotheism is not a laughing
matter. In the culture of pluralism, the chief virtue is toleration,
which is the notion that all religious views are to be tolerated, all
political views are to be tolerated. The only thing that cannot be
tolerated is a claim to exclusivity. There is a built-in, inherent
antipathy towards all claims of exclusivity. To say that there is one
God is repulsive to the pluralists. To say that one God has not
revealed Himself by a plurality of avatars in history is also
repugnant. A single God with an only begotten Son is a deity who adds
insult to injury by claiming an exclusive Son. There cannot be only one
Mediator between man and God. There must be many according to
pluralists today. It is equally a truism among pluralists that if there
is one way to God, there must be many ways to God, and certainly it
cannot be accepted that there is only one way. The exclusive claims of
Christianity in terms of God, in terms of Christ, in terms of
salvation, cannot live in peaceful coexistence with pluralists.
Beyond the question of the existence of God and of His Son, and of a
singular way of salvation, there is also a rejection of any claim to
having or possessing an exclusive source of divine revelation. At the
time of the Reformation, the so-called solas of the Reformation were
asserted. It was said that justification is by faith alone (sola fide), that it is through Christ alone (solus Christus), that it is through grace alone (sola gratia), and that it is for God's glory alone (soli Deo gloria). But perhaps most repugnant to the modern pluralist is the exclusive claim of sola Scriptura. The idea of sola Scriptura
is that there is only one written source of divine revelation, which
can never be placed on a parallel status with confessional statements,
creeds, or the traditions of the church. Scripture alone has the
authority to bind the conscience precisely because only Scripture is
the written revelation of almighty God. The implications of sola Scriptura
for pluralism are many. Not the least of them is this: It carries a
fundamental denial of the revelatory character of all other religious
books. An advocate of sola Scriptura does not believe that
God's revealed Word is found in the Bible and in the Book of Mormon,
the Bible and in the Koran, the Bible and in the Upanishads, the Bible
and in the Bhagavad Gita; rather, the Christian faith stands on the
singular and exclusive claim that the Bible and the Bible alone is
God's written word.
 The motto of the United States is e pluribus unum.
However, since the rise of the ideology of pluralism, the real Unum of
that motto has been ripped from its foundation. What drives pluralism
is the philosophical antecedent of relativism. All truth is relative;
therefore, no one idea or source can be seen as having any kind of
supremacy. Built into our law system is the idea of the equal
toleration under the law of all religions. It is a short step in
people's thinking from equal toleration under the law to equal
validity. The principle that all religions should be treated equally
under the law and have equal rights does not carry with it the
necessary inference that therefore all religions are valid. Even a
cursory, comparative examination of the world's religions reveals
points of radical contradiction among them, and unless one is prepared
to affirm the equal truth of contradictories, one must not be able to
embrace this fallacious assumption.
Sadly, with a philosophy of relativism and a philosophy of pluralism,
the science of logic doesn't matter. Logic is escorted to the door and
is firmly booted out of the house onto the street. There is no room for
logic in any system of pluralism and relativism. Indeed, it's a
misnomer to call either a system, because it is the idea of a
consistent, coherent view of truth that is unacceptable to the
pluralist. The fact that people reject exclusive claims to truth does
not invalidate those claims. It is the Christian's duty to hold firm to
the uniqueness of God and of His Christ and not compromise with the
advocates of pluralism.
*****
Dr. R.C. Sproul is senior minister of preaching and
teaching at Saint Andrew's Chapel in Sanford, Florida, and he is author
of The Truth of the Cross. For more than thirty years, Dr. Sproul has thoroughly and concisely
analyzed weighty theological, philosophical, and biblical topics in
"Right Now Counts Forever," drawing out practical applications for the
Christian in his own engaging style.
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