Epistemology and the Emerging Church (EC BIOLA #6)
May 18, 2005 Posted by Roger Overton
Scott Smith provided an excellent survey (from which the bulk of this
post is drawn) of the epistemology underlying much of the emergent
church movement (focusing on Brian McLaren’s views). McLaren’s bête
noire, according to Smith, is Cartesian (or classical) foundationalism.
Foundationalism, in its requirement of “bomb-proof” certainty (i.e., no
room for doubt) gives rise to combative and contentious attitudes
(e.g., apologetics as “defense” of the faith, political involvement as
part of the “culture war”); beliefs about God as rigid and controlling;
reduction of the Christian life to a belief system; and an inordinate
focus on the individual. Foundationalism, McLaren continues, is largely
responsible for the arrogance and legalism so often found among
conservative Christians.
Postmodern epistemology, on the other hand, recognizes that we can’t
know absolute truths—allowing for intellectual humility. Acknowledging
a limited, contingent, historically situated perspective leads us to
embrace wonder and mystery. Nothing is purely objective, but instead
all truth is contextual; all meanings find their place within a story
and community because we are trapped within our language and unable to
access an independent, objective reality. Through the influences of
Jacques Derrida, Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Nancey Murphy, and
Alasdair MacIntyre (among others), McLaren has apparently come to
believe that postmodern philosophy has successfully deconstructed
modern (i.e., foundationalist) epistemology. We can’t, as the moderns
thought, know universal objective truths, because language serves as a
barrier between objective reality and us.
Smith is careful to give McLaren credit where it’s due, and
acknowledges that McLaren has correctly diagnosed one of the problems
with evangelicalism today: an emphasis on certainty that has elevated
truth at the expense of grace, resulting in alienation of those who are
hurting (or those who don’t buy into a foundationalist epistemology).
Smith, however, also points out some serious flaws in McLaren’s own
“belief system”:
rejected; but no one today (or rather, no one consciously espousing a
particular version of foundationalism) is a Cartesian foundationalist.
The modest foundationalist, on the other hand, rightly recognizes that
we don’t need certainty to know reality (for example, says Smith, we
could be mistaken about certain historical facts—that George Bush is
president in 2005, that the twin towers were destroyed on 9/11, that
Jesus rose from the dead—but that doesn’t mean that we don’t describe
reality when we assert them).
Not all “modern” Christians are combative and contentious. Certainly some evangelicals are as McLaren
describes: rigid, controlling, etc. But a commitment to modest
foundationalism certainly doesn’t entail such attitudes, and in fact
most of us can probably think of counterexamples to the kind of (rigid,
controlling) Christian McLaren describes.
Postmodern epistemology is self-defeating. At the
heart of postmodern epistemology is the claim that we are trapped
inside language and therefore cannot know objective reality as it is.
But this claim is either 1) just a construction of my story and/or
community, and therefore not applicable to other communities; or 2)
objectively and independently true—in which case, it presupposes what
it denies (i.e., epistemic access to objective reality). It is simply impossible to maintain this view consistently.
Postmodern epistemology makes (true) theological
knowledge impossible. If the postmodern claim above is taken seriously, then
there are disturbing implications for theology. First, God is just a
construction unique to our community. Further, facts about the
incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, while true for the
Christian community, have no bearing on those communities for whom he’s
not a part of the story. And finally, we can’t know the authentic Jesus
as he truly (objectively) was. (This is particularly troubling, it
would seem, for those in the emergent church who want to shun a propositional theology in favor
of an incarnational theology.)
Thoughtful evangelicals should no doubt (sorry, couldn't resist)
be wary of falling prey to the attitudes McLaren criticizes; they
should also be wary, however, of the treacherous waters of postmodern
epistemology. Postmodernism, as a response to the ills that plague the
church today, is (to borrow a line from J.P. Moreland) the cure that
kills the patient.
Related posts:
- Interview with Scott Smith, Part II
- Book Review: The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball
- ETS 2006- Brett Kunkle: Essential Concerns Regarding the Emerging Church
- Dan Kimball: A Revolution in Church and Teaching (EC BIOLA #1)
- The Corporate Church- An Emerging Church Update
- To Hell with McLaren & The Emerging Church
Posted in Emerging / Emergent Church, Main Page, Philosophy, Religion (General), Theology
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May 18th, 2005 at 1:19 pm
Great post! My only complain with Smith, and I know him only through what's been written above, is that he includes MacIntyre with the Derrida, Grenz, etc. MacIntyre is extremely critical of much of modernity, but it is from a Thomistic, Aristotelian framework, and he is one of the first contemporary philosophers to really address emotivism as a real problem in contemporary discouse.
May 18th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
Thanks, Micah. As for MacIntyre, Smith offers these quotes as indicative of his influence on McLaren (both come from Whose Justice? Which Rationality?):
May 18th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
I should read and comment, this is afterall right up my alley of interest. I'll try to get back here and give it a read.
May 18th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
Right. MacIntyre is criticizing the fact/value distinction whereby moderns divided what we can know for sure between those “facts” that can be proved scientifically, or perhaps rationally, and those “values” that we believe but aren't really factual. He's criticizing the most hyper-rationalistic elements of the Enlightenment and the is/ought distiction.
MacIntyre is defending the pre-modern, and entirely Christian, belief that we can know moral truths, such as the evil of slavery, and that we can rationally speak about human nature adn a teleology whereby we can judge whether an action is just, and indeed whether an entire life is well-lived. There are moral facts as well as physical facts.
I don't know what McLaren gets from Macintyre, though MacIntyre does espouse a notion of “narrative” by which we understand actions and morals, and he does argue that there are different traditions that are logically consistent but mutually incompatible. That said, he still maintains that some are more defensible than others, though there is an internal tension here (i.e., what system is MacIntyre accessing in order to judge the various traditions, he can't stand in a vacumm). Ultimately I think his foundation is a (broadly Catholic) Christian one, but he's probably better known for his indictment of modernity than he is for his positive project (which may be why McLaren cites him).
May 20th, 2005 at 4:35 am
i am a little lost. Was Smith actually saying that McLaren believes, as Moreland says, that postmodernism is the “cure” for the church's problems and a philosophcial ANSWER to modernity's excesses? I just cant remember McLaren saying that, nor do i think he would agree with what he was accused of. I have heard McLaren say that postmodernity is the water the church swims in, but that is a very different thing.
Surely the emerging church, as i understand it, is attempting to bring a prophetic transformation through the gospel into a world described (sometimes incorrectly) as postmodern . . and NOT . . bringing pomo thinking to a world looking for a new philosophy.
May 20th, 2005 at 10:35 am
Andrew, here's a quote from a blog on a seminar with Brian McLaren (see http://www.deepsoil.com/2004/03/pluralism_revis.html):
“Relativism is chemotherapy for the problem of absolutism. It
May 20th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Do I understand that right in it saying that McLaren cites Schaeffer for “tyranny of the majority?” Francis Schaeffer? Another Schaeffer?
I'm nearly certain it was Tocqevillle. Sorry for the tangential post.
May 21st, 2005 at 9:14 am
'Twas indeed Tocqueville, and it was also discussed by Mill. Although I can't say for sure, my guess is that Schaeffer referred to the “tyranny of the majority” in How Should We Then Live? while arguing against moral relativism.
May 21st, 2005 at 1:07 pm
I think one of the major problems in this whole enchilada has been the fact that McLaren uses philosophical and theological terms in different ways than they are understood by philosophers and theologians within evangelical Christianity, so understanding what McLaren believes has been extremely difficult.
July 29th, 2006 at 5:13 am
Yes, but according to postmodern thought, it doesn't matter what the author intended, it's what it means to the reader that counts. What does it mean to you?
July 29th, 2006 at 11:11 am
How then can McLaren criticize Carson for not being truly conversant with the emerging church?