The Intolerance of Tolerance
The Intolerance of Tolerance
By: D.A. Carson
“The sad reality is that this new, contemporary tolerance is intrinsically intolerant. It is blind to its own shortcomings because it erroneously thinks it holds the moral high ground.”
“No culture can be tolerant of everything or intolerant of everything: it is simply not possible.”
The idea that tolerance is intolerant is something we need to wrap our minds around. How can this statement be true? If the culture of ‘tolerance’ seemed intolerant in 2012 when D.A. Carson wrote this book, then this book is even more relevant today where any differing viewpoint from the majority is labeled as ignorance and bigotry. People are less and less apt to express an opinion or viewpoint for fear of being ‘canceled’ or publicly and negatively called out. “Tolerance” as defined decades ago, is indeed, it would seem, a thing of the past.
In this book, D.A. Carson talks about semantics, traces historical lines through ideologies or movements that have influenced our understanding of tolerance, and exposes the inconsistencies of this ‘new tolerance’ as it is wielded today. He also discusses how the separation of church and state plays into the equation. Because the new form of tolerance requires acceptance and validation of all views, Carson reveals what that means for truth claims of Christianity (and other religions). He wraps up the book by recounting political implications of intolerant tolerance and how it will make a successful democracy increasingly harder; and then he offers some practical steps/thoughts for us moving forward.
Be warned, the book is a bit scholarly and dense and will take some concentration to follow and understand, but it is not impossible and definitely worth it.
Carson explains the subtle but significant difference in definition. ‘Tolerate’ means the “accepting the existence of other views", but ‘tolerance’ now means the “acceptance of different views.”
“To accept that a different or opposing position exists and deserves the right to exist is one thing; to accept the position itself means that one is no longer opposing it. The new tolerance suggests that actually accepting another’s position means believing that position to be true, or at least as true as your own….we leap from permitting the articulation of beliefs and claims with which we do not agree to asserting that all beliefs and claims are equally valid. Thus we shift from the old tolerance to the new".”
“An older view of tolerance… in line with the famous utterance often (if erroneously) assigned to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”… makes 3 assumptions: 1) there is objective truth out there, and it is our duty to pursue that truth 2) the various parties in a dispute think that they know what the truth of the matter is, even though they disagree sharply, each part thinking the other is wrong; 3) nevertheless they hold that the best chance of uncovering the truth of the matter, or the best chance of persuading most people with reason and not with coercion, is by unhindered exchange of ideas, no matter how wrongheaded some of those ideas seem.”
“The fact that the new tolerance is prone to label all of its opponents intolerant… has come to wield enormous power in much of Western culture… It functions as a ‘defeater belief.’ A defeater belief is a belief that defeats other beliefs… rules certain other beliefs out of court… the person who holds a defeater belief may listen with some intellectual interest but readily dismisses everything you say without much thought. Put together several such defeater beliefs and make them widely popular and you have created an implausibility structure .”
[In terms of ‘free speech’, a look at the book The Coddling of the American Mind is relevant here.]
Society has linked tolerance with inclusion, yet has no issue with excluding those who do not agree with them.
“it is sometimes easier for a Christian to find a place at the table today than it was thirty or forty years ago. But the price is high: if the Christian maintains that there is an exclusive element in Christian confessionalism, which of course implies that others are in some measure wrong, the place at the table is often quickly withdrawn. The grounds for the withdrawal are not, formally speaking, that the Christian is a Christian, but that the Christian is intolerant, which cannot be tolerated. Thus the world of academia exerts not-so-subtle pressures for Christians to develop a form of Christian expression that disowns or at least silences the exclusiveness claims that are grounded in Scripture itself.”
“When New York’s Central Park allows New Yorkers to set up a Christian nativity scene, a Jewish menorah, and a Muslim star and crescent, each paid for by private citizens even though the displays are on public property, that’s inclusion. By contrast, a few years ago when Eugene, Oregon, banned Christmas trees from public property because this would not be inclusive, they were exclusive.”
“The point is that, while claiming the moral high ground, the secularists are unambiguously attempting to push their own agendas. They have every right to do so, of course, but they do not have the right to assume that their stance is ‘neutral’ and therefore intrinsically superior.”
The most significant thing about this whole ordeal is the matter of truth. Tolerance is now seen as a virtue and is attached to moral relativism. The main tenet of moral relativism is that there is no standard for truth, we can’t know what the standard for truth is or means, and/or we don’t care about whatever standard of truth there is. But as Christians we must uphold the truths of the Bible. If we cave in to secular forces, and make ‘being nice’ of supreme importance and moral value, what do we lose?
Carson answers, “…my aim is to unpack some of the ways in which Christians who attempt to be faithful to the Bible are bound to uphold certain truths- truths that remain true whether anyone believes them or not, truths that are bound up in the gospel, truths that cannot be sacrificed on the altar of the great goddess of relativism… none of this makes Christians intolerant in the old sense of that word. If they are judged intolerant in the new sense, the price of escaping the charge is too high to pay: it would mean abandoning Christ.”
“Relativism promises freedom but enslaves people: it refuses to acknowledge sin and evil the way the Bible does, and therefore it never adequately confronts sin and evil, and therefore leaves people enslaved by sin and evil. Even at societal levels, it is an invitation to destruction, for if everyone does that which is right in their own eyes, the end is either anarchic chaos or cultural cries for more laws in order to establish stability…”
I will not go into detail about the political aspect of the tolerance conversation contained in one of his chapters, as he gives several examples of how this has played out for different people/organizations, [Another good resource discussing Christianity in the public square is Jonathan Leeman’s book How the Nations Rage] but I will drop this quote here as I believe it is a startling and accurate depiction of the waters we, as a country, are dipping our feet into.
“Democracies become progressively more difficult as their citizens become progressively more polarized… Add enough polarization, however, and a democracy will drift toward a) a revolt in the ballot box that brings a reforming group to power; or b) increasing intrusion by the government into every area of its citizens’ lives in order to preserve order where there is no longer a unified vision; or c) in the worst case, civil war.”
The last chapter of the book includes Carson’s ten “words” (FYI it’s definitely more than ten words. Let’s call it points instead.) They range from advocating for intellectual and religious diversity, to preserving truth, evangelizing, and practicing civility, to exposing secularism’s arrogance, wrongly attributed neutrality and superiority, and to preparing to suffer as we trust in the Lord who is our hope in all things.
Finally, here are two very good quotes to sum it all up!
“We need to distinguish between the tolerant mind and the tolerant spirit. Tolerant in spirit a Christian should always be, loving, understanding, forgiving and forbearing others, making allowances for them, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, for true love ‘bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.’ But how can we be tolerant of mind of what God has plainly revealed to be either evil or erroneous.” - John R W Stott
“The purpose of an open mind is the same as that of an open mouth- to close it again on something solid.”- G.K. Chesterton