Gagging of God, The: Christianity Confronts Pluralism [Paperback]

How can biblical Christianity speak about the reality, person, nature and will of God to a pluralistic society? Does Christianity have any hope of authoritatively addressing a society in which postmodern thought has cast doubt not only on the truth of the claims of Christianity, but also on the possibility of the existence of such a thing as objective, knowable truth? This is the challenge taken up by D.A. Carson in The Gagging of God; Christianity Confronts Pluralism.

Our world and more immediately the United States, contains a vast diversity of races, values, heritages, languages, cultures, and religions. D.A. Carson has observed not only this fact in The Gagging of God, but also that the people of the United States are viewing this diversity with increasing favorability. Carson, as an evangelical Christian, has no quarrel with either of these phenomenon, which he terms "empirical pluralism" - the fact that there is considerable diversity within our culture, and "cherished pluralism" - the growing belief among Americans that this diversity is good and positive. His quarrel is with what he terms philosophical or hemeneutical pluralism: "...the notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong" (19). This is the stripe of pluralism that gags God, because it robs him of the ability to make truth claims about himself or anything else. Likewise, it robs Christians of the ability to make similar truth claims, regardless of their basis, because to do so would be to elevate their beliefs to a "true" status, superior to the claims of others, thereby violating philosophical pluralism.

The popularity of philosophical pluralism cannot be denied as sixty-four percent of recently surveyed Americans believe that "there is no such thing as absolute truth" (23). Philosophical pluralism in our society has naturally given rise to religious pluralism wherein it is believed that all religions are really saying the same thing. The contemporary, bible believing church has no choice but to confront philosophical pluralism.

The Gagging of God has something for everyone approaching the challenge of pluralism. For the philosopher there is a treasure trove of philosophical discussion. For the Bible student there is keen insight into the plot line of God's revelation and its relationship to contemporary pluralism. For the student of modern culture there is clear discussion and description of our pluralistic society. For the Christian missionary, foreign or domestic, there is good practical help with the challenge of contextualization. For the contemporary Christian there are good answers to the questions and challenges of pluralism we continually face. The drawback in this volume may be found in Carson's handling of other literature. While Carson addresses our contemporary culture well and provides material that equips Christians for confronting pluralism, much good insight is somewhat camouflaged in a forest of scholarly argument. Carson obviously has a strong interest in engaging the published ideas of others, but he does this to distraction. Carson's bibliography contains over 1,000 works he either quotes or refers to in this volume. While he may be complimented on his thoroughness, his citation-and-response approach to other scholars is overdone and detracts from the readability of the book. A more concise, less argumentative approach would have been more effective in accomplishing his goals.

Carson states that he was drawn to the subject of pluralism as a Christian teacher of hermeneutics and a Christian preacher. The "ever present need to understand one's own culture" (9) is key to both of these vocations and, in fact, any service to the contemporary church. Thus, this volume immediately appeals to anyone who can see that to effectively communicate with and minister to our culture, we must understand our culture. The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism makes a tremendous contribution toward that end and is highly recommended to anyone who genuinely believes that the gospel holds the solution to the dilemma of contemporary culture and genuine desires to intelligibly communicate that gospel to this generation.

The title has a two-fold meaning. On one level, it is talking about how contemporary pluralistic thinking gags God. If truth is impossible to communicate, how can God speak? I'm not sure this should be offensive to a postmodernist. Their whole goal is to deconstruct religious thinking so God can't be said to speak to us anymore.

However, the truly offensive aspect of the title is the more profound meaning. Much of what Carson does in this book is to show how Christians have been gagging God by reacting to pluralism in wholly inappropriate and unbiblical ways. Someone who has digested his analysis in a self-evaluating way cannot miss that. The title is supposed to be offensive to Christians because Christians are the people who should know better. Because of that, the title is not quite a very clever pun but something in that area.