Issue 43 Expressions of churchBlog | Diversity in the New Testament
Diversity in the New Testament
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 16.06.25
It is often claimed that diversity is an important theme in the story of scripture – but in fact it would be more accurate to say that diversity-in-unity (or perhaps unity-in-diversity) is the dominant theme.
We can see this in the opening pages of the Old Testament. Two things are striking about the first creation account in Genesis 1. The first is the wonder of the diversity of the created order – the plants and trees are ‘according to their various kinds’, the lights in the sky are sun, moon, and starts in all their splendour, and land, sea and sky are ‘swarming’ with every kind of creature. Yet we might miss the most striking thing about this diversity: it all springs from the creativity of the one God. In other ancient creation stories, the diversity of the world comes from the diversity of the gods, or even the conflict between them. But in this story, we have a central paradox: the immaterial God expresses creativity through making a material world, and the one God creates a vast diversity of life to fill it.
The diversity of humanity
This theme of diversity-from-unity is found at key points in the story of God’s dealings with the world. When human sin abounds and God decides to remake the world after the flood, once more we find diversity flowing from a single source. God’s command to Noah echoes exactly his original command to Adam and Eve: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth’ (Genesis 9:1). The following chapter, Genesis 10, then catalogues the diversity of humanity and flows from this one origin, with a repeated fourfold refrain:
