{"id":86,"date":"2005-01-14T09:28:12","date_gmt":"2005-01-14T17:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=69"},"modified":"2005-01-14T09:28:12","modified_gmt":"2005-01-14T17:28:12","slug":"proper-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2005\/01\/14\/proper-confidence\/","title":{"rendered":"Proper Confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished reading Lesslie Newbigin&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0802808565\/qid=1105712285\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_ka_1\/102-6925403-2968927?v=glance&#038;s=books&#038;n=507846\">Proper Confidence (Faith, Doubt &#038; Certainty in Christian Discipleship)<\/a>.  I reccomend it to anyone interested in how postmodern epistemology and Christian thought can or should interface.<\/p>\n<p>I particularly appreciated Newbigin&#8217;s critique of the critical principle in Carteisan rationalism.  As Newbigin succinctly defines it, the critical principle is that &#8220;[e]very truth claim must be open to criticism.&#8221;  (<em>Proper Confidence<\/em> 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&#8217;s view, should be secondary:  &#8220;[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.&#8221;  (<em>Proper Confidence<\/em>, at p. 25.)  I agree with these conclusions, and I think they&#8217;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 &#8220;proven&#8221; apart from any faith commitments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just finished reading Lesslie Newbigin&#8217;s Proper Confidence (Faith, Doubt &#038; 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&#8217;s critique of the critical principle in Carteisan rationalism. As Newbigin succinctly defines it, the critical principle is that &#8220;[e]very [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-1o","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}