CYOA: Genesis 1 and Pluralism

I cannot read Genesis 1 without thinking about pluralism. In my final semester at college, I took a course called Theological Confessions in which I delivered a presentation titled after a book by Marjorie Suchocki, “A Christian Affirmation of Religious Pluralism.” It was an enlightening experience to argue for pluralism, as the idea is so often deemed heretical in Christian circles and neglected of careful thought. I was inspired by Marjorie Suchocki, a retired theologian of 12 years from Claremont School of Theology in California, who celebrates religious pluralism based on a theology of divinity and diversity that emerges from Genesis 1. This post will summarize her perspective pertaining to this passage.

Suchocki works out of a process-relational theology where relationships are integral to identity and existence and where people exist based on their creative response to physical and psychical relationships. She claims that God also exists in creative response to relationships.

Suchocki makes the case for religious diversity by looking at Genesis 1 through a relational worldview. She develops a “call and response” theology based on creation out of chaos. This “call and response” is exemplified in God’s call “let there be light” where creation is wooed into becoming and creation’s response is that there is light (Suchochi 25). God in turn responds to creation with judgment “the light was good”. This proves that we have a God who actively responds to the world in each moment. Naturally, God’s calls and responses lead to diversity.

Suchocki views religions under this same “call and response” theology. “The call and response theology of creation requires diversity not only in the environmental world, but also, given the increase in freedom and the consequent creation of culture, it requires diversity in the religious world as well. If God is involved in the forms of religion we call Judaism and Christianity, then he is involved in all forms of religion” (Suchoki 34). For example, in the Christian phenomenon God was involved in calling together Jews and Gentiles to a new form of community. Meanwhile he was still involved in the evolution of Judaism. Surely as God was involved in Jewish, Roman and Greek culture so to would he be involved in other cultures (Suchoki 33-34).

Now we ask: is it possible in this world for the varying religions to represent various calls of God to various people in their own contexts? Is the story of Genesis 1 everyone’s story or is it one of many? How do we live as Christians in a pluralistic society?

This is only the beginning of Suchocki’s case for multiple truths and an introduction to her understanding of Christ’s radical presence in all religions.

Suchocki, Marjorie Hewitt. Divinity and Diversity: A Christian Affirmation of Religious Pluralism.Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003. 1-125. Print.