Category: Theology

I’ve just finished reading Lesslie Newbigin’s Proper Confidence (Faith, Doubt & Certainty in Christian Discipleship). I reccomend it to anyone interested in how postmodern epistemology and Christian thought can or should interface.

I particularly appreciated Newbigin’s critique of the critical principle in Carteisan rationalism. As Newbigin succinctly defines it, the critical principle is that “[e]very truth claim must be open to criticism.” (Proper Confidence at p. 23.) He notes that this principle is self-refuting because it rests on its own presuppositional faith commitment: that all valid truth claims can ultimately be proven or disproven. The critical principle, in Newbigin’s view, should be secondary: “[t]he capacity to doubt, to question what seems obvious, is a necessary element in our effort toknow reality as it is, but its role is derivative and secondary. Rational doubt depends on faith; rational faith does not depend on doubt.” (Proper Confidence, at p. 25.) I agree with these conclusions, and I think they’re an important part of why we Evangelicals must reevaluate our commitment to rationalist foundationalism. Ultimately, as Newbigin concludes, rationalist foundationalism leads to extreme skepticism and nihlism, because nothing can be “proven” apart from any faith commitments.

If you’ve been following my thoughts here recently, you’ll see I’ve been reading quite a bit about the “Emergent” movement and postmodern thought. I do think we Evangelicals need to deal better with the epistememological issues raised by postmodern thought. As I look more into Emergent, however, I’m growing increasingly concerned about how that movement is doing this.

My sample of Emergent probably is skewed because it primarily comes from reading Brian McLaren’s books and haning out on The Ooze. What’s really disturbing me is that much of the conversation seems to go beyond “how can we as committed Christians better understand our faith, theology and fellowship with each other in light of recent developments in epistemology” to a free-for-all that sometimes is, at best, sub-Christian.

I’m not completely sure what the problem is, or even if there is one “problem.” It seems, however, that some folks take non-foundationalism or epistemological uncertainty so far that they have indeed bought into the “anything goes” of relativism. It becomes difficult, if not impossible, to generate a discussion beyond the level of individual feelings, because there is no locus or loci of authority.

Maybe the issue is that the higher level ideas — the real theological meat offered by folks like John Franke and Nancey Murphy — don’t trickle down to many at the popular level. All some people hear is “the old ways of thinking about truth and authority are being uprooted”; they don’t hear “and here is a better way to think about these things, that recognizes there is truth and authority, perhaps even more robust concepts of truth and authority, without foundationalist epistemology.” It’s a bit discouraging.

This weekend, I read McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian and Tomlinson’s The Post-Evangelical. Both books contain some thoughts that resonate deeply with me. Both also raise some theological and doctrinal issues that scare me. Read on for a table that expresses some of my thoughts and feelings.

An interesting sidebar here that I hope to explore another time: I wonder how much of this truly is about “postmodern” versus “modern” thinking, and how much is simply overemphasis within the Evangelical sub-culture on some doctrines and practices to the exclusion of others. If the emerging movement draws often from pre-modern sources (as, for example, in the writings of some of the Catholic and Eastern Christian mystics), is the concern really one of escaping foundationalism, or is it more one of recovering a theological and cultural balance that was jettisoned as the Reformation splintered and the Church in America went through the Great Awakenings and the many other transitions that led to Fundamentalism? Nearly everything I express in my table (not that I claim my table to be exaustive or myself to be an expert) doesn’t necessarily require any reference to modern vs. postmodern. I suppose that is a definitional issue as well, as McLaren discusses “postmodernism” as more a set of cultural attitudes than a particular epistemology.

a href=”http://www.neiluchitel.com/archives/week_2004_06_13-2004_06_19.html#000118″ title=”DIGITUS, FINGER “>Neil Uchitel continues the discussion of epistemology with a long and intriguing post. I agree with a fair amount of what Neil says. I do, however, want to make something clear: I believe in absolute truth. I’m not advocating the view that the limits of human knowledge or the impact of the observer on the thing observed renders any notion of absolute truth false. Nor am I advocating postmodernism, understood as the view I just repudiated, as a valid alternative for Christians. What I do say is that we can’t simply dismiss postmodern epistemology by referring to some simple construct we call “knowledge” or “certainty.” In engaging postmodernism, we need to acknowledge that our definition of “knowledge” or “certainty” must be one based on a reasonable belief that our perceptions correspond to an actual reality. The realm of true and full epistemological certainty belongs only to God. Yet there is such a thing as true and full epistemological certainty, even if we cannot possess it in this life.