I’ve been participating in a conversation about the Emerging Church and epsitemology, one of my favorite subjects, at Vos Regnum Dei. The text of the conversation thus far is below. Some good stuff to chew over.
Are there knowable truths that correspond with reality for all people, in all cultures over all of time? Why or why not?
John:
Yes, there are knowable truths that correspond with reality for all people all the time.Holding one’s head under water for longer than 4 minutes, on every hemisphere and in every century, may cause brain damage and even death.
Scot:
Well, the question surprises me because I thought we were beyond this as the entry point for discussion about the emerging movement. I’m not quite sure what to say since I hear about this so rarely, and the only time I do hear about the epistemological question is when I hear it from those who don’t understand the movement.
I assume knowledge of Gibbs-Bolger, the book that seriously describes the movement. I don’t have it front of me, since my son has my copy, but I don’t recall this being part of the mix.
And by the way, I’m a critical realist.
I think we might have started this conversation off on the wrong foot. The terms we’ve used — “knowable” and “correspond to reality” – are loaded. They refer to the epistemological stance that Douglas Groothius and J.P. Moreland refer to as “modest foundationalism” and that others call “common sense realism.” By using these terms, we’re answering a bunch of questions before we even ask them. It seems that there might even be an agenda behind the selection of these particular words.
Perhaps we should have asked, “does the emerging church believe in truth?” A group of emerging church leaders have answered this question in a letter responding to their critics. The letter, which is signed by a number of prominent emerging church leaders, is on Brian McLaren’s website, and provides a good overview of emerging church responses to many recent critiques. Here’s what they say:
we would like to clarify, contrary to statements and inferences made by some, that yes, we truly believe there is such a thing as truth and truth matters – if we did not believe this, we would have no good reason to write or speak; no, we are not moral or epistemological relativists any more than anyone or any community is who takes hermeneutical positions – we believe that radical relativism is absurd and dangerous, as is arrogant absolutism….
So, if we take this statement at face value, the emerging church believes in truth, not relativism. What we need to do now, and what I’ll try to do in the next few days, is unpack how I think many in the emerging church view concepts such as “knowledge” and “correspondence to reality.” I’ll think we’ll see that there are differences between the views of many emerging church thinkers and the views of many “modest foundationalists” or “common sense realists.” Hopefully then we can productively explore the reasons for those differences.
John:
I pretty much agree with the Emergent U.S. position on absolute truth, not to sound cagy, but I’m not sure how much more on this topic you will get out of me.
David and Brian, are you able to see just how linear and modern your approach to discovery is?
You see, already after the first round of questions we emergent folks are immediately on the defensive and having to justify our existence. Very un-pomo, guys 🙂 Since the emerging church is so often accused of capitulating to culture, I could easily ask you guys to defend the existence of classical Evangelicalism as a response to changing culture at the turn of the 20th century.
In you’re questioning I feel that there is an unspoken assumption that your perception of Truth is the starting point, the hub, the landmark and you are simply seeing if we fit into your mold. These are simply hoops that you’re seeing if we will jump through. If this were an ’emergent conversation’ perhaps you would have first described why you feel what you believe is the definition of truth and what concerns you in regards to the emerging church’s idea of truth, citing specific examples that have created your concern. Then we might be able to actually converse.
Please understand, most of us didn’t “purge and emerge” because of philosophical disagreements over the definition of terms. In my story, I loved Jesus and wanted serve and worship him, but I found it impossible in the existing religious church culture. I couldn’t keep up the ruse that the king wasn’t naked. I needed Jesus and had to have him so I had to find him and thank God I found that there are thousands of others desperately at the same place. So when you think and look to me, you’d be amiss to think you’d find a rebel of the truth, but instead I hope you’d think of me as a seeker of the Truth.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to break decorum, but then again, that happens in conversations.
John,
I think you might have misunderstood what I wrote. I agree with you that the categories in our initial question were tilted towards a certain epistemology, and I was trying to point that out. I can relate, deeply, to your story. I’m part of a typical, perhaps sometimes backward-looking, Evangelical church, and aspects of it have disturbed me for a long time. I’ve appreciated many of the critiques I’ve read from theologians such as Grenz, Franke, and Murphey of the marrige between Evangelical theology and foundationalism. So, please, don’t take me as trying to put you or anyone else on the defensive.
So here’s some of what I currently think about this question. I think there’s too much confusion between ontology and epistemology. It terms of ontology, I think there is “absolute” Truth. God is real, and He is who He is regardless of whether anyone thinks or says otherwise. Creation also is real, and that reality is what it is regardless of whether anyone thinks or says otherwise. In terms of epistemology, however, the modifier “absolute” troubles me. God must have “absolute” knowledge, because that is part of what it means to be God. We are not God, and part of our non-Godness is the limitation on our knowledge. Moreover, our non-Godness includes limitations on our abilities to percieve and understand “absolute” reality.
In some instances, these limitations on perception and understanding are severe. When the Bible tells us that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12), it’s telling us about an aspect of creation that we can’t directly perceive and only dimly understand. If we step back and think about the implications of this on our epistemology, it’s staggering: the dialectic that frames our existence is something we can’t “know” in any direct sense!
For me, then, one of the appeals of the emerging church movement is its willingness to accept the limitations of our non-Godness and to recognize that there are mysteries in faith and life. On the other hand, it seems to me that there are dangers in letting that emphasize become too dominant. God did, after all, create us in His image, which includes rational and noetic capabilities. There are many things we can “know” in the sense of human knowledge. I don’t see how recognizing our non-Godness should lead to a fear of linear propositions, any more than recognizing the value of limited propositions should lead to a fear of mystery and narrative. At the end of the day, it seems to me that we’re dealing with an age-old question: what does it mean to be human?
Jeff:
Absolutely, there are knowable truths that correspond with reality for all people, in all cultures over all of time. 🙂
I’ll be the first to admit that I am the least knowledgeable person in this forum on the emergent church. I have picked up, however, on a general angst among evangelicals (JP Moreland and others) about the EC and its apparent potential to embrace postmodern views of truth and knowledge.
Here is a quote I copied from Melinda (at Stand To Reason) who blogged on August 08, 2005 about a Moreland lecture she attended.
“Though few in the EC buy postmodernism wholesale, still many of the ideas they are borrowing from this influential worldview in the culture are part and parcel of this philosophy that undermines objective knowledge and truth, essential ideas to Christianity and the Good News. If we can’t objectively diagnose humankind’s problem of sin and alienation from God, then we have no Gospel to offer. If there is no objective knowledge we can know, then the foundation of the Gospel is undermined.
Postmodernism says that even asking if there is some objective reality and truth, such as God’s truth, is irrelevant. It’s an old, modernist mode of thinking to want to ask that question. Each of us has our own story, our own way of explaining our reality, and there isn’t anything more.”
I think Moreland makes a strong point. Now the question is, is he straw manning the EC? Is it the case that J.P. Moreland just happened to pick up the wrong book on the EC (Moreland mentioned an author named Tomlinson, btw).
Judging by at least the initial responses in our forum, it looks like perhaps Moreland simply picked a poor spokesman for the EC, and that this concern has since been put to rest — if it ever existed — (especially since Scot was surprised by this question and rarely even hears it voiced).
Jeff and I have had this conversation before, but maybe this will help flesh out some of these questions at least as I see them. I get a bit concerned when I read statements like the one attributed here to Moreland. It starts to sound like “if you don’t think like me, you’re compromising the gospel, and maybe you’re not really a Christian.” I grew up with lots of stuff like that, so I react against it now. I think the same is true for many “post-evangelicals” who would identify now with the emerging church.
I’ve read lots of stuff by Moreland, and I like much of it, particularly his stuff on the philosophy of science. But when you unpack what Moreland is saying here about epistemology, his premises seem questionable. Moreland and Groothius outline their argument in detail in the book “Reclaiming the Center.” Essentially, they argue that we can rely on our perceptions and reason as a foundation for knowledge. They acknowledge the problem of solipsism that is inherent in strict Cartesian rationality, but they seek to avoid this problem by arguing that “knowledge” doesn’t require indubitability. One can question whether human reason and perception are adequate bases of knowledge, but it is reasonable, they argue, to set such questions aside and simply accept the foundation of reason and perception on something akin to faith. In particular, as Christians, we can have some confidence in our reason and perception because we believe we are made in God’s image and that He wants us to be able to know him.
This is fine as far as it goes, but it’s hardly truly “objective.” All the handwringing about how “objective knowledge” is foundational to an understanding of the gospel then starts to look like mere hand waving. Moreland and Groothius simply define “objective” to mean “ultimately founded on faith.” One thing I like about “postmodern” evangelical-ish theology is that it readily acknowledges that as human beings, we will never have perfectly objective knowledge, in the sense of knowledge untouched by history, culture, perception, language, and such. This doesn’t necessarily mean nothing counts as “knowledge.” It may just mean being a bit more careful about what we claim as “knowledge.”
So, I don’t think Moreland is necessarily just tilting at strawmen. Many “postmodern” evangelical theologians do take a different view of “knowledge” than the mild common sense realism he promotes. But Moreland’s response to this, it seems to me, misses the mark in many ways.