Recommended Resources

I've found D. A. Carson's writings and talks to be orthodox, informed, fair-minded, and encouraging. The Gospel Coalition has a large number of his talks in MP3 format...here's three I really liked:

Can the truth be nailed? - the best short discussion of postmodernism I've run across...there's also a Q&A. This is a shorter version of a talk he gave at the European Leadership Forum

Evaluating a complex movement - an update/commentary on his book "Becoming Conversant With the Emergent Church"

We Preach Christ Crucified - a nice discussion of what is required for the gospel to remain Biblical...provides some insight into the ways it has been attacked over the past 200 years.

And, he mentioned Tim Keller's discussion of idolatry...also very good (however, a bit large...70 MB). Finally, here's a page with links to a lot of free MP3 recordings of Keller.

Misc. Modernism & Postmodernism

One of the benefits (curses?) of understanding the modern/postmodern/Christian premodern contrast is seeing it appear in unexpected places. Here's a few memorable appearances:

From one of my favorite singer songwriters (Joanna Newsom, En Gallop, Milk-Eyed Mender):

"Never get so attached to a poem, you
Forget truth that lacks lyricism, and
Never draw so close to the heat, that
You forget that you must eat"

In an age where emotion almost always trumps reason, it's nice to hear one of the more entertaining lyricists of our time acknowledge the danger of unconstrained romanticism.

And, in a recent exchange on a listserver I monitor (where naval strategy is a frequent topic), there was a discussion of the limits of a purely physical/materialist foundation for a military. I'll quote at length (in the order of comments):

comment 1

Jeff,

Krepinivich’s article and others all continue to overlook the fact that there is a foundational flaw in our Western Philosophy and only with our Philosophy. The East Asian and Islamic Philosophies are free of this self-imposed boundary that has truncated our intellectual /mental processes. In addition, the operating philosophy of the West Logical Positivism was declared “collapsed" by eminent Western Philosophers but that knowledge has been consistently ignored by the Defense Department and Armed Services. The existing Western Philosophy worked well as a framework and guide for Physical, i.e., Materialistic, problems but it is failing to provide the added framework and guidelines for Knowledge Processing Science. The non-materialistic domain is where our adversaries are starting to leave us behind while we are stuck in materialistic or physical domain. America has the knowledge needed to correct the basic philosophical problems and in addition has the requisite knowledge to leap-frog our adversaries and then take the lead into the 21st Century.

Thank you.
Ed


response to comment by Captain Hughes:

All:

I don't think I follow all of this but it may be connected to the following. When Francis Bacon et al, tried to correct Western philosophy's--especially what was called natural philosophy--distortions and corruptions by the alchemists, soothsayers, and fortune tellers by demanding a scientific basis for truth, they (probably unknowingly) set in motion the intellectual revolution that has now reached the sad claim that "if you can't prove something scientifically with measurable evidence then it doesn't exist or you must act as if it doesn't." And as we all know even scientific proof is regarded always as tentative.

The Western scientific age has thrown the baby of human insight, goodness, beauty and truth, warror spirit, and everything else metaphysical out of rational thought. Because of this keen loss, some people think that the Asian philosophies and Islam have something superior to offer. More likely this is only true in the sense that our Western roots in philosophy and religion were emasculated by the scientific revolution. Modern Western philosophy is now neutralized (tongue tied) and reduced to things like logical positivism on the understandable if trite side, or to jargon on the obscure side with intellectually uncommunicative stuff that is only understood by other "philosophers." I can't help suspecting them of having become the new soothsayers--charlatons themselves in a sort of modern pseudoscientific pretension.

HERE IS THE POINT

Any theory of combat worth the name must talk about (1) the physical part (more kills and wounded over there than on our side), (2) the mental part (persuading the enemy he is losing while using your brain to shoot from a superior position) (3) and the spiritual part (overcoming your fear and imposing it in the enemy). Soldiers are appalled by mention of the soul, or metaphysics, but every experienced fighter believes in willpower and the need to follow positive leadership. Some of these things are measurable and so admissible in our scientific age, but most of them except casualties are just ignored in planning and analysis. If treating the soul as real is what is meant by Eastern philosophy, then yes, there's something in it that the West has lost.

I am treading on getting off the legitimate subject matter authorized by Jeff for discussions, but I don't think strategy, policy, operations, or (and especially) combat can be discussed without including some metaphysics.

Captain Hughes

and, my response in a private e-mail to Captain Hughes:



As someone with a longtime interest in the philosophical shifts you describe, I must compliment you on a clear description of what was lost in the wake of Kant/Hume/etc.

As logical positivism crashed and burned in the early 20th century (e.g., Godel's Incompleteness Theorem), a shift occurred: from modernism's epistemological optimism/utopianism to postmodernism's epistemological pessimism/relativism.....from a focus on an objective reality that can be completely understood & described, to a focus on language games about a subjective/arbitrary "reality" where meaning is a social construct imprisoned in a specific time and place.

Both extremes deny the metaphysical, and thereby reflect a fatally truncated understanding of what it means to be human. The negative consequences for us and our social organizations continue to emerge. Whether any society can long survive without a serious/robust metaphysical foundation remains unclear.....

Thank you for speaking up!

Walter R. Smith



The recent confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor have highlighted the fact that even a supporter of a "living constitution" (appearing before a forum that also overwhelmingly holds the same view) feels the need to adopt a facade of originalism...perhaps evidence that a significant majority of the population remains uneasy with a postmodern epistemology when it comes to the law.

Finally, Francis Schaeffer (How Should We Then Live?) records an observation his son made about how the 23rd Psalm has evolved in the West from the Enlightenment:


They began - I am my Shepherd
Then - Sheep are my shepherd
Then - Everything is my shepherd
Finally - Nothing is my shepherd

Even though Schaeffer's son appears to have since rejected a traditional understanding of scriptural authority, his description of modernism's descent into nihilism remains trenchant.

Language and Meaning

Since all assertions about authority are made via language, I feel obliged to make a few (further) observations about language and meaning.

• Modernism - meaning is ultimately grounded in the individual's ability to observe (empiricism) and reason (rationalism). Language is a tool for representing the truth that results from these two activities. A symbol (word) and what it refers to (object) are decoupled with a one-way relationship from symbol to object.
  Language = Truth.
• Postmodernism (or hyper-modernism) - meaning is unknowable; language/symbols are treated playfully (Pop Art), negatively (feminism), or other? A symbol and its referent are arbitrarily tangled in a way that reflects & reinforces existing power structures.
  Language = Power.

Both approaches reflect a limitation of a human-centered epistemology. Modernism is overly optimistic; postmodernism is overly pessimistic.

A Christian worldview is ultimately grounded in Christ and avoids both extremes (more below).

Modernism correctly appreciates that the world is knowable, that relations in the world can be modeled in language and communicated to other places/times, and that there is a stable relationship between the world and these models. However, it fails to appreciate the limits of our ability to sense (the quantum world) and reason (paradoxes like "this statement is false" where symbol and referent are tangled).

Postmodernism latches onto these limitations (hence the term hyper-modernism) to highlight the fact that a human-centered knowing ultimately has a Wile E Coyote problem (picture him running over a cliff, then looking down, then looking at the camera)...all such knowing is ultimately grounded on thin air.

A few years ago Ken Boa and Robert Bowman wrote a nice overview of apologetics (Faith Has Its Reasons; see Boa's site for the entire text). In it, they describe a taxonomy of 4 approaches :

• Classical - emphasizes reason
• Evidential - emphasizes evidence
• Reformed - emphasizes special revelation
• Fideist - emphasizes experience

Not surprisingly, they propose to integrate all four approaches. The first two seem to be toward the modern end of the spectrum, the last seems more toward the postmodern end.

The third approach (Reformed) is the most difficult to understand. It asserts that for knowledge to be coherent, it must presuppose the truth of the Bible...especially the truth of Jesus.

Even Christians often struggle with this since, in the Western world, we are grounded in and saturated by a human-centered way of knowing from the time we're born. Moving to a way of seeing that is truly grounded in God's special revelation takes time and reflects a certain degree of maturity (see I Cor 1-3).

And, our limitations bubble to the surface when we consider that all our knowing is mediated through experience and reason....another tangled hierarchy since our apprehension of the Word is mediated through these two, but what we come to understand from the Word dethrones us (along with our experience and reason) as the ultimate knower and puts God on that throne.

Miscellaneous Web Resources - May 2009

I'm going to take a break and mention a few sites I follow these days. For most of these, I download mp3's onto my mp3 player and listen while running/driving. However, before I get into a longish list, I'll recommend two recent favorites:

• Is The Culture Shaping Us or Are We Shaping The Culture? - D. A. Carson is one of the best known traditional theologians alive today. This talk was given at a CBMW conference, along with one on 1 Timothy 2.
• What Husbands and Wives Aren't Telling Each Other - This interview of Steve and Annie Chapman is a refreshing change from the typical Biblically-based discussion of marriage.
  

Now, the sites:

• American Family Radio - overtly Christian, AFR covers stories that aren't mentioned elsewhere. Since revamping their programming to emphasize talk, they provide the most comprehensive news/issues coverage from a Christian worldview I know of...unless, your definition of Christianity is more "social gospel" than traditional. The programs include:
  • AFA Report - 1 hr daily; social issues/news of the day; you can usually skip the last 20-30 minutes (i.e., when they go to their first caller)
  • Today's Issues - 2 hrs daily; content varies wildly; I probably don't listen to a program more than once every 2-3 weeks
  • Matt Friedeman Show - 3 hrs daily; I never download this since it is on during drive time; the most balanced Christian talk show I know of (most tend to one of two poles: overtly religious (e.g., Renewing Your Mind (below)) or largely secular/family/political/etc. topics from a Christian worldview (e.g., Focus on the Family, Point of View, etc.)...there's nothing else out there quite like it...
    
  • News - onenewsnow.com has the stories discussed in the AFA Report
    

• AFR also broadcasts some of the best independent Christian worldview programs, including:
  • The Christian Worldview - 2 hr weekly; associated with Summit Ministries (the premier Christian worldview training group); I don't know how to download their audio since it's played via Shockwave (I know there are Internet radio recorders that will do the trick...I'm not talking about one of those).
    
  • CrossExamined - 1 hr weekly; crossexamined.org was founded by Frank Turek ("I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist") to address the problem that 70-75% of teens leave the church after high school. His list of resources is one of the better lists.
    
  • Richard Land Live - 3 hrs weekly; Richard Land is head of the public policy branch of the Southern Baptist Convention; usually a nice summary of the week's news. Also, see his daily program For Faith and Family; (some occasional overlap between the weekday and weekend programs)
    
  • Point of View - 2 hours daily; founded by Marlin Maddoux, this is the original Christian worldview radio program (it was one the pioneers of satellite broadcasting)
  • Liberty Live - 1 hour daily; Matt Staver (Dean of Liberty University School of Law) discusses legal aspects of current issues
    

• Albert Mohler Program - daily, 1 hour; covers current issues; Mohler is President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and played a central role in moving the Southern Baptist Convention back to a Biblical foundation in the 1990's.
  
• Renewing Your Mind - R. C. Sproul's daily program (30 min.) is for the serious Bible student with an interest in theology and philosophy.
• Shepherd's Conference - Although I believe we are saved completely by grace (not works), I just can't find Calvinism in the Bible. Having said that, the keynote talks at the 2009 conference are exceptionally wise. All traditional Christian groups are struggling to maintain the authority of ALL of Christ's words (Matthew through Revelation; Jn 16:12-15) in a culture that relentlessly preaches superficial "love" and "tolerance". (requires free registration)
  
• Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood - I'll have more to say about these folks later, but they explore one of the basic questions of existence...what does it mean to be male and female?...from a traditional Biblical perspective. Highly recommended...the area of sexuality is where a Biblical worldview clashes most clearly with today's secular/monist worldview.

Ok, that's enough for now...and probably more than you can listen to regularly... :-)

Authority, Not Power

Our world is obsessed with the acquisition and exercise of power. Authority is often seen as not much more than a fig leaf used to provide some justification for using power.

I suppose this has always been true...but, in the Western world, the arc of modernism through hyper/post-modernism, combined with the unmooring of democracy from its origins in the idea that all humans are in God's image and therefore equal in value, has been especially effective in convincing folks that power is mostly accidental, usually arbitrary, and generally oppressive.

To put it another way, there's little if any moral justification (i.e., generally recognized basis in authority) for the possession or exercise of power.

This is the sort of thing that books are written about, so I'll try to throw out a few observations to consider.

• When modernism adopted a naturalistic epistemology (i.e., no knowledge of the metaphysical is possible) it denied that any knowledge of God was possible. A key turning point was Darwin's assertion that accidents could result in apparent design (i.e., distinctive species). As the denial of an overarching authority (God) that provided meaning and purpose worked its way into the social realm, a variety of alternatives were proposed (e.g., nihilism). The brutal results of this trend were seen in the French Revolution and especially in the 20th century (e.g., Hitler, Stalin). And, even though Mao, Pol Pot, and other dictators were not primarily grounded in modernism, they did use a framework created by a Westerner who was part of that shift (Marx). I'm not an expert in any of these areas, but it seems to me that there's much more emphasis on power than authority in these movements, though an appeal to some sort of moral authority is usually made to provide justification for the exercise of power.


• In places in the West where the loss of transcendent authority was not accompanied by revolution (e.g., the U.S.), the same kind of erosion in authority occured. This erosion was seen in the emergence of radical individualism, radical egalitarianism, and relativism, instead of violent revolution. Since there's no transcendent defininition of what's true or right or beautiful, it's up to each individual to create their own definition. And, no one else has any basis to challenge that definition. At the same time, the locus of authority shifted from the church to the state. The state's authority gradually became autonomous, and in democracies, entirely dependent on 50.1% of today's voters (and, increasingly, 5 judges whose sense of justice transcends law). The concept of "blind justice" and the "rule of law" faded along with a belief in transcendent norms...after all, why should I have to get a super-majority to amend the Constitution when it's clear that most "right-thinking" people know that some law is "clearly" unjust and is simply a reflection of an "antiquated" morality (echoes of modernism's notion that scientific and technological progress has a moral analog). The Founder's fears of a "tyranny of the majority" that denies any overarching moral authority seem increasingly justified.


• Postmodernism has thrown some especially combustive fuel on this fire. The assertion that language (and therefore meaning) is fundamentally about the imposition and reinforcement of power structures (a) tends to deny universal knowledge of general revelation (the natural world and morality), and (b) tends to undermine the belief that any propositional knowledge conveyed via language is sure. The fact that these postmodern propositions are captured in and communicated via words would seem to undermine them. But, many folks appear to be less disturbed by that contradiction than by the fact that humans have been unable to arrive at a universally accepted set of moral premises, reasoning, and conclusions.

During the past few years, I've often heard an encouragement to "speak [left-wing] truth to power." Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that the actions most praised by these encouragers are those that "speak power to Truth."

So....what is a biblical perspective? Again, this is a book-length topic, but here are a few observations:

• We constantly make decisions and take action...i.e., exercise power...for specific purposes. This process almost always includes propositional knowledge of some sort, though it can never be purely propositional since propositional knowledge is silent on ends/purpose/telos.
• In the exercise of power, we are slaves. Romans 5-8 makes it clear that all humans are slaves...either to our own desire to disobey God (sin) or to righteousness (that leads to obedience). Our only choice is who will be our master. Paul argues that the old law is inherently good (since it came from God)...our problem is we constantly rebel against it and can only become slaves to righteousness by God's grace and Christ's sacrifice.
• From Genesis through Revelation, we see an unusual God. He is clearly transcendent in His goodness, love, justice, and authority, but He rarely intervenes in His creation by exercising power. Instead, He constantly entreats His people to submit to his authority. His divine and loving nature is seen in His commands (Psalm 119) that provide moral guidance in a fallen world, but His people constantly spit in His face. His call to submit to authority (in contrast to exercising of power) is seen in the other areas where God has delegated authority to specific roles (e.g., Christ-Spirit, Christ-church, elders-congregation, husband-wife, parent-child, government-citizen).
• From our perspective, this focus on submission to authority often seems unjust and unjustified. After all, isn't authority primarily about ensuring justice? And, shouldn't the focus be on how we should use legitimate authority to right wrongs? This line of reasoning tends to ignore our fallen nature. We are human and therefore imperfect...too harsh, too lenient, corrupt, etc. At the same time, since we are in God's image, we want to see justice done in this life (if not this very day). Satan takes that desire and distorts it by tempting us to "play God" by taking actions that are outside of the authority we have been given, including the exercise of power against those who rebel against God. Such an exercise can only be justified if it clearly involves acting under God's authority...and such instances seem far and few between, with the authorized power being limited to a very small set of actions (e.g., corporeal punishment for young children where rebellion is clearly seen).
• Where we have authority, we should follow God and Christ's example by using power sparingly. God does not force Himself on us, though it is well within his power to do so. The Father and Son lead by loving example...John records numerous statements by Jesus about his submission to the Father and about our obligation as the Son's slaves to obey Him. Just as a final accounting of failure to submit to God's authority awaits Judgement Day, so does a final accounting of failure to submit to legitimate authority.
• Where we are required to exercise power (e.g., punishing children), we must do so. We disobey God when we refuse to fill a role He has given us...just as we disobey Him when we take on a role He has not given us.

Satan constantly tempts us to "be our own god" and (a) exercise power unwisely, and (b) exercise power outside of our scope of authority. The world denies the existence of any transcendent authority and focuses on how humans exercise power.

Christians are called us humbly submit to legitimate authority, and to exercise power with fear and trembling in light of the commands and example of our Master.

He Is Not Silent

Or, may I should title this post "A Final Word on Ontology"... :-)

Much of the focus of the past several hundred years has been on epistemology. As I've noted before, the Bible has relatively little to say about the limits of our intellect. It does, however, constantly stress how much our desires shape what we know. I Corinthians 1-3 and Psalms 119 are two passages I think of in this context.

From this perspective, right knowledge is mostly about right desires.

So, the basic ontology (beingness) of the universe, at least in regards to human decisions and actions (i.e., morality & spirituality), is clear to everyone (Romans 1). In the words of Francis Schaeffer, "He Is There and He Is Not Silent." Christian apologetics has tended to focus on how this is true in the empirical and rational realms (though the moral and spiritual has not been ignored).

However, the knowability of the physical universe via reason and empiricism can be misleading in the sense that there is a wide range of human ability to understand the rational and empirical aspects of the physical universe...few humans will ever have the intellectual capacity of a Newton, Gauss, Einstein, or Hawking.

If we try to apply the rational & empirical knowability of the physical universe in an analogical way to the spiritual and moral arena, we tend to head quickly toward some form of Gnosticism...special knowledge about the spiritual and moral that is available only to a select few.

This perspective is repeatedly denied explicitly and implicitly from Genesis through Revelation.

He Is There. He Is Not Silent. And, I suspect that if He spoke above a whisper, we would be deafened...unable to hear anything else, but still capable of (and perhaps even more predisposed to) rebellion.

Which leads to the next post...Authority, Not Power.

Christianity, Monism, and Authority

Although epistemology is a fundamental consideration in evaluating the validity of any asserted authority, theology may be more important. Seems like I remember R. C. Sproul saying something like "all heresies arise from bad theology."

I've already summarized my understanding of the authority structures in Christianity, so I'll highlight how Monism differs.

Caveat: as with any discussion of a philosophical concept, you can wind up in the weeds very fast...my superficial discussion below is based more on how various Monist concepts are influencing Western culture today than a rigorous consideration of a specific type of Monism. For example, my understanding is that most serious Buddhists from the East generally find Western interpretations of Buddhism more than a little narcissistic.

"All is one" is the basic belief of Monism. There is no fundamental separation between any god or rock or person or atom or etc. The physical and metaphysical are ontologically a single whole.

Traditional Christianity asserts that there are certain fundamental distinctions prior to creation and in the created order that must be recognized and respected. Among these are:

• God is separate from His creation, He created it volitionally (i.e., the universe is not an undirected emanation from God), He exercises authority over it, and He relates to it in a personal manner. A Monist perspective tends to deny all of this...there is no ultimate telos/purpose, there is no personal "God" ,and there is no legitimate source of authority other than an appeal to some sort of mystical knowledge. All people, animals, atoms, etc. are in a sense, "God."
• God is triune (Father, Son, Spirit). These distinctions and their roles (including the associated authority structure) are eternal. Though there's no current Monist heresy in this area (at least that I'm aware of), I think that (a) the concept of Allah in Islam (one, not triune), and (b) the egalitarian assertion that the Father-Son-Spirit authority structure is not eternal are dangerous assertions of an unbiblical oneness. More on the egalitarian perspective later.
• God is holy, humans are not (since all rebel) and are thereby separated from God, and the resulting rift between God and man is so fundamental that only the sacrifice of God in the flesh (Jesus) can repair it. Monism asserts that the apparent difference between holiness/goodness and sin/evil does not exist (e.g., Buddhism asserts they are an illusion).
• God made humans male and female. I'll address this is more detail later, but for now I'll simply note that Monism tends t0 be consistent with the belief that gender differences are superficial and fluid (i.e., not fixed) and that all possible sexual arrangements and interactions among living and non-living entities are equally valid. The degree to which this is consistent with the dominant secular ideology of Darwinism is unclear...eugenics came and went (though it's making a bit of a comeback in some circles), and it would seem that the success of sexual reproduction (vs. asexual reproduction) would resist a Monist sexuality, but that seems not to be the trend over the past couple of decades. And, genetic engineering is raising the distinct possibility of various types of reproduction: asexual (cloning), multi-sexual (a mixture of multiple males/females), and trans-species (a mixture of human and non-human). Whether God has wired the universe to make any of this impossible is not yet clear.
• God made humans to exercise stewardship authority over the rest of creation. Monism would tend to deny this, and would tend to be consistent with the more radical environmental movements that see humans as a cancer if humans are valued above other living and non-living entities. It is also consistent with a secular view that the universe was "self-created" (a logical contradiction) and with Darwinism.

I suppose the authority structures Christianity sees in the family and society (government) have not yet been as dramatically influenced by Monism (except for the husband-wife relationship...more on that later). However, it seems that this may be changing...for example, there's a growing tendency to (a) see children as autonomous (i.e., not under their parent's authority), (b) see all societal authorities as provisional at best (i.e., legitimate as long as they act in a way I think is "just") and fundamentally oppressive at worst...echoes of Marxism and other utopian frameworks that want to move the world toward some sort of blissful unity.

I guess that's more than enough for now. I'd be interested if you see other trends that are consistent with a Monist worldview.

A Final Note on Epistemology

There are lots of books that deal with epistemology from various perspectives. One of the more interesting ones I've read is Paul Hiebert's "Anthropological Reflections on Missiological Issues."

The taxonomy he presents includes Idealism (Absolute, Critical, Naive), Realism (Naive, Critical), Instrumentalism (Pragmatism), and Determinism. Idealism tends to focus on reality being in the mind (an bias toward epistemology), Realism tends to focus on reality being in the world (an bias toward ontology), and Pragmatism and Determinism are self-explanatory.

Here's a quote that gives some idea of how Hiebert writes:

"One consequence of instrumentalism is deconstructionism - giving up the search for one grand unifying theory of knowledge and celebrating pluralism and diversity despite their incongruity and lack of coherence. Jean-Francois Lyotard and other postmodernists see the world as fragmented and unpresentable. They detest the idea of what Habermas called the "unity of experience" and celebrate pluralism and contradiction. In this spirit Lyotard declares, 'It must be clear that it is our business not to supply reality but to invent illusion to the conceivable which cannot be presented. And it is not to be expected that this task will effect the last reconciliation between language games (which, under the name of faculties, Kant knew to be separated by a chasm), and that only the transcendental illusion (that of Hegel) can hope to totalize them into a real unity...Let us wage a war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the difference.' Linda Hutcheon notes, 'Willfully contradictory, then, post modern culture uses and abuses the conventions of discourse. There is no outside. All it can do is question from within.' In postmodernity there is no basis for debate over truth. We must tolerate differences and celebrate diversity. To seek to convert others to our beliefs is arrogance."

If you're interested in a Christian perspective on epistemology across cultures, this is a nice overview.

Epistemology III - Post-Modernism

Post-modernism's epistemology and its effects are in many ways less clear than those of modernism to the average person in Western society. There are probably multiple reasons, among them:

• It is a more recent development,


• It encompasses developments in several areas ("post" simply means "after"), and


• Its epistemology is grounded largely in a recent (and relatively opaque) linguistic theory...not the sort of thing kids read about in middle school (unlike the scientific method).

At the risk of fatal oversimplification, I'll define post-modernism (as an epistemology) as follows:

The understanding that

• knowledge is ultimately shaped by and grounded in language,


• language both reflects and reinforces existing power structures, and


• the key task of the knower is to deconstruct the existing assumptions and power structures seen in a text.

Note that the task of the knower is largely de-structive (vs. the con-structive activity engaged by the modern knower), though via a specified process.

This has various implications:

• All knowledge is subjective, relative, narrative, and specific to a time, place, and individual knower,


• All language and knowledge claims are best seen as attempts to exert power,


• All claims to objective universal knowledge are attempts to oppress others.

Although this summary is may be closer to parody than reality (or maybe it's closer to a deconstructed post-modernism), I think it's a reasonable summary for purposes of thinking about its influence on epistemology.

In the area of general revelation, even the hardest of modern science is seen by some as socially constructed, and therefore relative (not objective). In the popular arena, this critique finds a sympathetic hearing among those who see technology (being grounded in math, physics, and chemistry) as inherently oppressive. More broadly, claims to universally knowable objective knowledge of any type, much less about the metaphysical and God, are dismissed.

In the area of special revelation, the Bible is seen as just another text whose traditional reading and understanding simply reflects another place and time. Therefore, traditional understandings should be, a priori, rejected as attempts to impose the perspectives and values (a relatively new term) of another place and time on a current place and time. Traditional liberal Protestantism rejected miracles; postmodern Protestantism rejects doctrines (assertions of universal Truth) and is generally suspicious of any text that does not align with an amorphous definition of "tolerance." Regardless, it seems that modern and postmodern approaches to Christianity are reaching roughly the same conclusions about required/desired individual and corporate behavior.

If modernism is sometimes encourages in the broader culture an "easy believism" (17,400 hits in Google), post-modernism would seem to encourage what might be called "easy skepticism" (352 hits in Google). Most of us have been indoctrinated about such dangers as appeals to authority and the limits of reason. On the other hand, most of us have thought little (if any) about the dangers of acting on uninformed emotion since "everyone knows that knowledge is subjective and relative"(and is therefore not worth pursuing).

Since the culture we live in is mostly post-modern, it would seem that the primary danger Christians face from it is a tendency to either (a) not pursue a knowledge of the Bible's text, or (b) to apply a sophisticated linguistic theory that distorts the plain meaning of the text (e.g., by emphasizing what is different between a current context and the context of the original text, instead of discerning the meaning conveyed by the text that is universal across all contexts).

Epistemology II - Modernism

Western modernism is grounded in a distinctive mix of rationalism and empiricism that we see most clearly in the scientific method’s knowledge-generating loop of observe, hypothesize, experiment.

Modernism's epistemological foundation of reason and empirical data would obviously make it resist any inference of causes that are not both rational and empirically measurable.

As a result, modernism has several centuries of persistent skepticism of (a) inferences from general revelation that imply there is design or purpose in the universe, and (b) statements in special revelation that assert that God intervened in the universe in an undeniable and observable way that violates its normal cause-effect structure (i.e., miracles).

In the 19th century, this was seen in Darwin's alternate explanation for the origin of species (though we have yet to see anything comparable proposed for the origin of the universe or the origin of life...both areas are seen as highly speculative by even the most radical atheist/agnostic), and in the denial of miracles (other than a generic creation act) that characterized Deism, higher criticism, and what came to be called liberal Protestantism.

In both areas (general and special revelation), one primary motive was to harmonize traditional Christian understandings with (a) what was being discovered by the scientific method, and (b) assertions about epistemology being made by such philosophers as Kant and Hume(both expressed skepticism about knowing anything about the metaphysical). Hegel's notions about Progress also formalized a notion that remains to this day...that the sort of scientific progress we see in the technical arena will spread to the moral and social domains.

Needless to say, various 20th century experiments and thinkers largely destroyed the idea that modernism would provide a base in which all knowledge could be grounded.

In the domain of philosophy, logical positivism came and went, and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem destroyed the idea that all statements in any formal system are knowable (his mathematical treatment of a statement roughly analogous to "this statement is false" foreshadowed what has become a standard critique of any system that asserts it provides a sure foundation for knowledge).

In the popular mind, the limits of modernism are probably not appreciated...the march of technology largely obscures the fact that in such areas of cosmology, quantum-level physics, the structure and makeup of the universe, the origin of life, and macro-evolution (i.e., specific known mechanisms that demonstrate the spontaneous generation of novel biological structures/functions), science seems to have hit major speed-bumps, if not actual walls, while traditional appeals to such ideas as design (intelligent design) and the existence of God (in the field of philosophy) have seen a significant resurgence.

In the domains of morality and society, modernism's failures are much more obvious. The 20th century saw an unprecedented slaughter driven by such modern ideas as fascism and communism. And, western societies abandoned Biblical morality and disintegrated into a moral chaos so pervasive as to be virtually invisible to those born after 1970. Whether traditional western democracy, private property, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion can survive such a shift remains unclear.

Epistemology I - How Do We Know?

Before getting into specifics about authority as seen by the individual, family, church, and government, I'm going to take a short detour into epistemology. Although this topic is complex and deserves a longer treatment, I probably need to cover a few basics before I can clearly discuss some aspects of the created order. So, a few brief comments on the topic of epistemology, or, how we know what we know.

The question of "how we know what we know" has a long history. In the Western world, it has tended to focus on such issues as how knowable a specific area is, how reliable our senses are, and how we structure and use knowledge. Although I may discuss those issues later, my purpose is focus on what seems to me to be a plausible Biblical understanding.

Bottom line up front: My impression from the Bible is that there is far more admonition about our attitude and our actions than about what we think of as knowledge…"study to show yourself approved…" is a relatively rare command. I don’t think that’s because it’s unimportant. It’s obviously important, but the inference I draw is that the basic facts are hidden not so much by our lack of factual information or our inability to grasp the plain meaning of a text, but our unwillingness to see what those facts (or the text) means to our life...because we don't want to live in accordance with those facts (I Cor. 1-2). We want to be our own god.

So, what is the traditional Christian understanding of how we know? Two sources are generally defined:

• Special revelation, and
• General revelation.

Special revelation is that which is directly from God (generally understood to be the Bible), and general revelation is everything else (specifically, nature, and our conscience).

Here's my current understanding (from both general and special revelation) about how we know what we know:

1. Since God is social (a triune being), we, being created in his image, are social. We interact with each other and with God.
2. God created the universe, humans, and language.
3. Language is the primary vehicle by which we know.
4. The purpose of knowledge is primarily to inform both action and disposition ("emotions"). This implies that a core aspect of knowledge is an understanding of cause-effect structures (i.e., "how do I create a cause such that the desired effect is achieved?"), and an understanding of how knowledge shapes emotions.
5. Action has its origins more in the emotions than in reason...emotion is "what to do", reason is "how to do it".
6. Our ability to know is fallen. Specifically, our ability to map language to meaning is partial and flawed, as is our ability to discern whether our desires are consistent with God's will, as is our ability to fully grasp cause-effect structures in all domains (i.e., physical, social, moral, emotional, etc.).
7. God knew all of this before we were created. Therefore, his communication with us takes all this into account.
8. If God is who he says he is (in both general and special revelation), it seems that we can be sure that we can gain an understanding of both general and special revelation that, while partial and flawed, is capable of generating emotions and actions that are both sensible and pleasing to God. I'm going to deliberately ignore a discussion of how Calvinism or how the Spirit or etc. might shape this understanding.
9. As I said previously, the Bible seems to spend much more time talking about shaping the emotions than it does shaping our ability to reason (i.e.,"study to show yourself approved..."). The two obviously cannot be untangled, but it seems to me that those overly influenced by modernism place too much emphasis on the power of reason and the pitfalls of emotions, and those overly influenced by post-modernism place too much emphasis on the power of emotions and the pitfalls of reason.

Which leads to two primary lines of attack on general and special revelation. The first has its roots in modernism, and the second in post-modernism.