"From Creation onward, God intended that the human race should develop with a diversity of individuals. Even apart from the Fall, different people would have had different gifts and different experiences, so that one person's insights into the truth would compliment those of another. The introduction of sin did not create diversity but rather made it contentious.Our true unity and diversity is restored in principle in our union with Christ. Being united to Christ and conformed to his image destroys only the bad forms of diversity. The diversity of gifts in the body of Christ (Rom. 12:3-8; 1 Cor. 12:7-31; Eph. 4:7-16) does not threaten unity in the truth but reinforces it. Growing up into the full understanding of the truth requires the full exercise of the diverse roles of the body (Eph. 4:11-16).No one human being has all the fullness of Christ's gifts. All of us are to learn from others who have insights and contributions we could not easily achieve ourselves. When we listen to other people sympathetically, we obtain perspectives on the truth different from our own. Of course, we do not accept everyone else's ideas uncritically. But we make an effort to listen lovingly and to take the other person's point of view. In doing so, we achieve a kind of second perspective on the truth.The use of multiple perspectives in our own thinking is thus a way of trying to reproduce and strengthen some of the effects that have always occurred in the growth of the church. Using multiple perspectives ourselves does not eliminate the importance of listening to others but strengthens our ability to do so (because we have had practice shifting points of view)."
- Vern S. Poythress, Symphonic Theology: The Validity of Multiple Perspectives in Theology, p. 53.
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