Pluralism isn't a modern invention

By Mark Vernon
author, researcher

We live in a plural world. It's a place in which every day you rub up against people with very different worldviews than your own. Your neighbor might be an atheist, a theist, a polytheist, an agnostic. Every variation on these metaphysical themes is being played out in a human life near you.

It's a new world, we think. Moreover, no one appears to be weakening in their convictions. If anything, divisive beliefs grow stronger. The Internet and Web sites; best-selling books; TV and radio programs tackling the 'big questions'. They tend to entrench views, not mediate differences. After all, conflict secures sales, not debate. A different opinion is not something to be shared, it's something to be defeated.

Which highlights something else about our plural age: it is quite possible to imagine changing worldview yourself.

We imagine that before modern times, a Christian, say, might have met an atheist, but they could no more have thought of becoming one than changing their sex. You can, in fact, now do both. Or, today you might be an agnostic, though you remember what it was once like to believe. You've changed once, so you might change again, and in a world of change, odds are that you will. So how can you be sure of what you now hold dear?

Or perhaps it's like investing in a stock market of meaning. It's hard to predict which belief stocks will rise or fall. Religious shares are volatile but high yielding. Perhaps agnostic bonds are a safer bet. And yet, who doesn't fear a faith crunch.

It all creates a deep sense of uncertainty and insecurity. The distinguished Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor, has called them 'cross-pressures'. And it raises a big question: how are we to live together with these cross-pressure - different and yet still needing to share some sense of the common good.

There is no easy answer, but some clues might come from looking to the past. It's easy to think that pluralism is a quintessentially modern experience, and yet it was something that the ancient Roman world knew too. It was a plural place as well, the Mediterranean sea being the information superhighway of the times. In particular, Christians would sit at the feet of pagans, and vice versa, each learning from one another.

The records of these interfaith encounters can be moving. Consider the letters exchanged between Synesius, the bishop of Ptolemais, a city in modern-day Libya, and Hypatia, the pagan head of the Platonic school in Alexandria. She could be called his 'spiritual director'. One time, he wrote to her asking for advice on whether or not to publish a book, noting that only she is 'really able to pass judgment' on it. 'You always have power, and long may you have it and make good use of that power,' he continues.

There was a major exchange of ideas too. The first Christians spent a lot of time trying to understand what the 'Jesus event' really meant. How were they to understand this intuition they had that he was, somehow, divine?

To do so, they drew on pagan ideas about the logos.

For the ancient Greek school known as the Stoics, the logos was a kind of cosmic life force that ran through the universe. Stoics sought to understand the workings of this logos and align their lives to it - to find that which is most true within them, we might say. Logos theology was developed by the Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria, too. He interpreted it as a kind of principle of creation that draws all things together.

Ideas like this were pregnant with possibility for the Christians. Hence, when John came to write his gospel, he opened it with the timeless line:

'In the beginning was the logos' - usually translated as 'word'. Paul drew on similar resources when, in his letters, he came to understand his encounter on the Damascus road as with the cosmic Christ. Jesus was the incarnation of the world soul, the life force of the universe. The Christians' study with the pagans helped make sense of their experience.

Of course, there was conflict too. The year 529AD was a seminal one, the date on which Plato's Academy was finally closed in Athens. It had fed the intellectual life of the ancient world for 900 years. Now, though, Christianity could brook no rivals. Hypatia too came to a disturbing end.
The bishops of Alexandria were turning against ancient philosophy. Bishop Cyril was especially brutal: he kept a private army of shock-troops.

Though she had many Christian friends and confidants, one day she fell foul of rampaging mob, an event we know about because the Christian chronicler, Socrates Scholasticus, tells us about it. She was, he implies, flayed alive.

Hypatia's end serves as a warning of the violence and anger cross-pressures can provoke. But the history of early Christianity's encounter with paganism also reminds us of an expansiveness of spirit.

'Those who, before Christ, led a life accompanied by logos are Christians, even if they were known as atheists,' wrote Justin in his Apology. 'Such were Socrates, Heraclitus and those like them.' In our spiritually plural times, we might learn from that too.

Mark Vernon is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London. He began his professional life as a priest in the Church of England. His new book is "Plato's Podcasts: The Ancients' Guide to Modern Living" (Oneworld).

By Mark Vernon |  February 26, 2010; 9:07 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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