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The Nature of Truth Metaphors

In response to some of the interesting comments and dialogue recently over the nature of and basis for truth claims, I’m going to make an effort to explain my current thinking about these issues. I should say at the outset that I’m still working through many of these thoughts, so my posts about them are in the nature of conversations about my thought process rather than dogmatic claims.

When we speak of things like “foundationalism” and “truth webs,” we’re employing metaphors to describe the nature of human knowledge. No metaphor, of course, is perfect. Given the limited utility of metaphors, we need to be particularly careful about how closely we identify our thinking with any given metaphor. As Christians, the metaphors we use to understand the nature of knowledge and truth should never divide us. These metaphors are simply tools that help us understand a reality we can’t fully grasp, and they should always be held loosely.

That said, here’s how I understand the metaphors of the foundation and the web, and some reasons why I think the foundation metaphor is problematic and the web metahpor preferable.

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More Thoughts on Common Sense Realism

I wanted to follow up a bit more on one illustration Phil Steiger used in his post on foundationalism. Phil seems to advocate common sense realism, which he refers to as “soft” foundationalism. He criticizes a coherence view of truth with the following illustration:

There are things attractive about Coherentism, but it has at least one infamous flaw. In court, for instance, it is entirely possible to construct a case against a defendant in which all the evidence points to their guilt and no piece of the evidence contradicts any other piece. The catch, however, is that the defendant is actually innocent. What we have is a coherent but false belief that the defendant is guilty.

The problem with this illustration is that it betrays more problems with foundationalism than with a coherence view of truth. Let’s say, for example, that there were a revelation from God concerning the accused’s innocence. This revelation seems to contradict logic: all the evidence the court has been able to percieve logically points to the accused’s guilt. Common sense realism would tell us we must convict, because the sole foundation for real knowledge is logic and common everyday perceptions. A web-based view of truth, however, would allow for faith in a revelation from God as one anchor point for our web of truth. We’d then be forced to reexamine the assumptions underlying the “common sense” evidence, and perhaps come to a different conclusion about the accused’s actual guilt.

The essential problem with any kind of foundationalism for a Christian, I think, is that many basic aspects of our faith can’t be explained by simply logic and common sense. The Trinity and the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s free will come immediately to mind. If logic and common sense are the only foundation for truth — and this is what foundationalism of any stripe claims — we’d then have to reject the Christian faith’s truth claims.

I do, of course, share Phil’s concerns that many postmodern thinkers would accept all beliefs as equally “true” so long as they’re internally coherent. As Christians, we believe in real truth, which means some things, as coherent or attractive as they seem, are not true. But, as Nancey Murphey demonstrated in Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism, truth web claims can be tested against each other within a coherency model, in particular by examining the relative consistency of a given web against another and the relationship of the web to how we experience reality.

In many ways, I think is how the “worldview” concept originally functioned. Our aim in promoting the Christian “worldview” shouldn’t be so much to justify Christianity against the yardstick of reason as to show how the Christian worldview is the most internally coherent web with the best correspondence to human experience.

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Epistemology

Apologetics and Soft Foundationalism

A number of bloggers are raising alarms about the Emergent movement, including Phil Steiger, Greg Koukul, Dignan and Jeff at Dawn Treader.

I share many of the concerns these folks have raised. It may not be clear from my site, but I’m not really an “Emergent” guy. I’m soundly Evangelical in my theology. Yet, I do feel great empathy with much in the Emergent movement, because much of it is a needed corrective for the stagnation that now exists in Evangelicaldom. I hope Evangelicals in the blogshpere don’t make “Emergent” the new whipping boy. That would betray a lack of real understanding of the movement.

I note, for example, that most of the posts I referenced essentially are critiques of Brian McLaren. Folks, Brian McLaren is not the sole voice of Emergent! He is indeed a leader of the movement, and although he isn’t a theologian, where he has touched on doctrinal matters, he can indeed justifiably be criticized for a tendency towards universalism.

Universalism and moral relativism, however, don’t have to be synonymous with a postmodern, non-foundationalist epistemology. If you want to understand more deeply why the Evangelical church must escape foundationalism — even the so-called “soft foundationalism” many propose — please, please read Newbiggin, Raschke, Murphey, Grenz and Franke before deciding Emergent is the next great plague. If you’re not willing to read the challenging stuff these folks have written, don’t comment on postmodern Evangelical theology, because you don’t really understand it. If you have read them, address what they’ve said, not only what McLaren has distilled from them.

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Templates and XML Back on line

Thankfully, I’ve now got my templates back on line as well as my RSS feed. Thanks to those who have continued to read and comment during my tech problems. I’ll respond to comments and get back to a regular posting schedule soon.

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I'm Back!

Looks like my tech problems are solved. My templates are still messed up, so for now I’m using the boring standard template, but I’ll have that fixed soon too. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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Pearcy's "Total Truth" and the Nature of Conversion

I’m about halfway through Nancy Pearcy’s “Total Truth” and wanted to share a few thoughts about it. Judging by the blurbs on the book jacket and some of the reviews it’s received on Amazon and in the blogsphere, it seems that Pearcy has struck a nerve among thinking Evangelicals. And “Total Truth” is an excellent book. Pearcy does an admirable job demonstrating why we must never separate life into “sacred” and “secular” domains. All truth is God’s truth, and genuine Christianity claims to speak to all of life (hence the title “Total Truth”).
Yet, there are many ways in which I think this book could have been much better. What I’d like to explore in this post is Pearcy’s description of her own conversion and what it says about the nature of faith.

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Still having technical problems…

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Technical Problems

I’m having tecnnical problems with this site. Please stand by.

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Remembering Our Place

This is from Isaiah 40:6-8:

“All men are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
because the breath of the Lord blows on them.”

Compared to God we are as transient and inconsequential as wild grasses that live only for a short season. All our “glory” — our buildings, books, songs, stories, arguments, knowledge — are as weightless to God as a wildflower that topples in a breeze.

It’s good to remember our place. We are not the source or arbiter of Truth. We can’t presume to make final and timeless judgements about anything. We can at our best bloom for our brief season, turning our faces to soak up and reflect the light of Him who made us.

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First Video Blog Entry

So here’s my first video blog entry, called “Cleanup Day.” Ok, it’s pretty lame, but it sure was fun to play around with Windows Media Maker. Click on the picture below to download and play the file.