Home > Resources

Towards Understanding Biblical Tolerance

My intention is to reflect on what the Bible teaches – if anything – about tolerance and its implications for the Church today. Before considering what I trust approximates to the Biblical perspective let me sketch society’s, that is our Western society’s, notion of tolerance.

Secular Tolerance

I think it is fair to say that Western society is keen to promote tolerance. It is a cardinal western virtue, maybe even the cardinal virtue. Tolerance is believed – with some justification – to be critical to the survival of a C21 pluralist society like ours. In the past pockets of society were more insular and homogenous and they tended to exist with an overarching belief system. Today, due to the influence of travel, migration, and media people of radically different belief systems and lifestyles live side by side. Tolerance seems absolutely necessary if society is not to crumble.

But here we must pause and note that the social ideas wrapped up in the word ‘tolerance’ has undergone a profound change over the last fifty or so years.

Fifty years ago if you had asked what a tolerant society meant the reply would have been something like this: the freedom to hold and express beliefs even if these beliefs are dotty or even dangerous. The freedom for others to courteously yet forcefully disagree would have been taken as read.

Voltaire is credited with encapsulating the spirit of this old-fashioned kind of tolerance in his dictum: ‘I do not agree with a word you are saying, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.’ Tolerance, you may notice, was extended to the person rather than the opinion. It was a tolerance based on the belief that Man had the inalienable right to freedom of belief and behaviour as long as these did not harm others.

This view was dominant from probably the C18 when modernism was the prevailing worldview. Modernism believed that absolute truth existed and certainty could be arrived at. Man was the measure of all things and by the process of objective reason could and in time would discover the great truths of the universe. The process of debate over competing ideas was how truth would eventually be established.

This entry has been viewed 70 times.

| More

About John

Hi there - I am a member of Greenview and have been for over 20 years. For a number of these years I functioned as an elder, however, indifferent health forced me to take more of a back seat. I see this as an opportunity to do a little writing, often focussing on issues that are a matter of evangelical debate today. Naturally the views expressed are my own and may not reflect the views of the elders or church at large, though differences are likely to be in the detail and not the substance.

These articles and sermons were written partly to clarify my own thoughts and partly with the intention of provoking thought in others who may read them. If you read one I hope you find it stimulating. Please feel free to give me feedback or discuss my articles in the forums.

Subscribe to My Blog

Related Documents

Related Websites

  • there are no related websites

Most Recent Articles

Popular Articles