I have a friend who loves to watch the same movies over and over. Since I’ve never been able to do this, I once asked him how he manages not to find the film boring after the first viewing. His response was that every time he watched a movie, he would put himself inside the head of a different character. This allowed him to explore different facets of and questions in the story.
I think this is a fantastic illustration of a practical use of Christian multiperspectivalism. I was first introduced to this idea in relation to Scripture by John Frame, with further nurture by Vern Poythress and Tim Keller. Since it continues to shape my thinking, I thought I’d post a summary here. I usually dislike derivative blog posts, but since I know many of you may not have been exposed to this concept, this will be a basic overview of the ideas concerned as they apply to our study and understanding of scripture.
A good taste of multiperspectival thought is in the introduction to Frame’s newest book. In discussing how ethics relates to Scripture, he says, “The whole Bible is ethics. Of course, the Bible is not only ethics. It is also narrative, for to understand the history of redemption we must have recourse to everything in Scripture. So the whole Bible is narrative as well as ethics. Similarly, the whole Bible is doctrinal truth, wisdom, evangelism, apologetics, and so on.” (Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, 4) To many evangelicals this is a jarring idea. We have so founded our thinking on opposition to what we perceive as a relativistic world, we think that any idea which seems to endanger plain, simple access to complete and absolute truth is a threat.
However, there is something profoundly true in Frame’s assessment of Scripture. I remember being in several conversations over the years that devolved into arguments about what the Bible was chiefly meant to teach us. Is it theology? Right living? I feel like these sorts of suppositions also underly all sorts of criticisms Christians level at one another. They accuse people of being overly theological, or of being moral heretics, or some other clever way to say that “my approach to Scripture is better than yours.” However, once you start thinking through Scripture in a multiperspectival way, these debates fall apart. Every passage of Scripture is meant to do multiple things. I have met people for whom parts of the bible I have never read in that way were tools for God to bring them to faith. For others, including myself, passages which I would naturally consider being about doctrine or redemptive history have brought deep conviction of sin. This is in fact how Scripture should be operating in the first place!
At the same time, it doesn’t let any of us off the hook. Multiperspectivalism doesn’t just say that there are multiple true perspectives on what a passage teaches. It instead insists that the way move toward real truth is to examine each of these perspectives one by one and, as we discover how Scripture speaks in each area, move closer to a holistic understanding of the Word of God.
Let me give you an example. Suppose I were to take a passage, say Ephesians 1, and seek to understand it. I might start by saying that this passage is about the doctrines of predestination and justification. True enough; this passage is certainly an important one in discussing these ideas. But wait: there is also Paul’s triad of faith, hope and love in the chapter (verses 12 and 15); it certainly wouldn’t be wrong to think through how this passage teaches me to display these virtues in my Christian life. Okay, maybe that’s all… but hold on, there’s some really interplay of the persons of the Trinity here. So I could spend time studying how the persons of the trinity interact in this passage. Oh, and in verse 8 Paul mentions wisdom, and the surrounding verses at least could help me learn how to cultivate biblical wisdom.
The list could go on, but this is probably sufficient to demonstrate what I’m getting at. Part of the power and mystery of Scripture is the depth of ideas which it teaches us and the varied ways in which we can apply them. The danger comes when we start to pit these ideas against each other. Suppose someone used Ephesians 1:18 to talk about how we should be motivated to obedience because of our hope in our eternal inheritance. I would be wrong to criticize them by saying that they’ve missed the ship, that the real point of this verse is to teach the doctrines of regeneration and election. However, this would not be wrong because the ideas aren’t in there - they sure are! Instead, the problem is that I am using one perspective on Scripture as superior to another and thus failing to see the whole truth of the passage.
A good sense of multiperspectivalism doesn’t just keep me from criticizing; it constrains me to be even more diligent in my own study. When I approach a text of God’s word and find something it’s about, I shouldn’t feel satisfied, as if with one pithy truth I have plumbed the depths of the passage. I should go back over and over, seeking to understand the text more fully as if it were a gem with many facets, each of which highlighted the beauty of the whole in a way that can only be seen as it is turned over and over.
What’s more, this also highlights my need for study of God’s word in community. I am naturally inclined to more easily see some perspectives on the text than others; believe me, the word predestined jumps out from Ephesians 1 far more quickly than the word love does. However, by engaging community in such a way as to really listen and learn from each other, we can often be challenged to look at a passage from a different angle and discover more of God’s truth.
I should make one final clarifying note here. I think I’ve made this clear by the way I’ve tried to use the word, but by perspective I mean something other than opinion, as in “that’s just your perspective”. A perspective in this case is more what one does when examining a statue at an art museum, walking around it and looking at it from different angles. If I say “this sculpture is the back of a man” and my friend says “this statue is the front of a man,” we’re sharing valid and complimentary perspectives on the statue. If I say “this sculpture is the back of a man” and my friend says “this statue is an artichoke,” we are not. Either one of us is wrong, or we’re looking at different statues to begin with.