I've fallen into a bad habit of reading the "Out of Ur" section of the CT website. Out of Ur is billed as "Conversations hosted by the editors of Leadership Journal" and has a subheading of "Following God's Call in a New World". As such, it leans heavily in the direction of "Emergent" Christianity, which is an extremely loose and difficult to define collection of approaches to communicating Christianity in a post modern context.
In recent months, there have been a few controversial exchanges. Brian McLaren started a firestorm when one of his posts implied rather strongly that he could not affirm a traditional view of homosexuality as a sin. Later Tony Jones laid out a feisty apologetic as to why the Emergent movement should not have a clear statement of faith. More recently, Jones, in responding to critics who equate emergent with a new Christian left, directly took on Chuck Colson for his criticism of Emergent as not accepting the notion of objective truth.
Knowing full well that Emergent does describe a broad collection of folks with a lot of views, it has been my impression that most of the key leaders of the movement are influenced greatly by a set of philosophical assumptions. And I find those assumptions troublesome.
They Critique Moderns...
It seems to be a common critique of my generation by emergents that we have been unduly influenced by modernism. This is not a point without merit. Mark Noll's Scandal of the Evangelical Mind makes the same point. Since the enlightenment, it is argued, evangelicals have adopted certain assumptions about the universe largely rooted in Francis Bacon's approach to knowledge. It is assumed that individuals can begin with facts and with careful "scientific" approaches to those facts, come to logical and air-tight conclusions. What folks in the postmodern world point out, it that such a view fails to account adequately for the influence of culture in interpreting those facts. So far, so good - I can accept that much.
They are Critiqued...
But here is the problem. While it may be true that Christians in the modern period have failed to analyze how modern presuppositions may have led to erroneous conclusions, post-modern Christians seem to be willingly, gleefully, and defiantly making the same mistake - adopting the philosophical presuppositions of their "emerging" era uncritically and allowing those presuppositions to rule their thinking and twist their view of the faith.
While Tony Jones refuses to commit to a doctrinal statement, there are certain things that can be surmised to be "creedal" statements of Emergentville. I'll be bold and review a few of them over the next few posts, beginning here...
Assumption 1: There is no such thing as objective knowledge - knowledge unaffected by bias.
That this is true is illustrated clearly by Jones' disagreement with Colson. Colson apparently argued in "Emerging Confusion: Jesus is the Truth Whether We Experience Him or Not" (can't find a link) that Emergent Christianity is too dependent on experience. As much as Emergent leaders protest that they are not complete relativists, Jones' response is instructive.
"In his penultimate paragraph, Colson refers to D.A. Carson, fellow critic of Emergent, who argues that objective truth precedes relational truth. Colson then weighs in with this philosophical doozy: "Truth is truth.” (Why don't you read that again.)
"You see, by saying that 'truth is truth,' Colson is essentially saying...well, nothing. That's called a "self-referential argument" or a "circular reference" and it's non-sensical; it doesn't say anything, and it doesn't mean anything."
Of course, the term is a term, not an argument, but we'll ignore that for now...
"...But if I can try to surmise Colson's meaning from the subtitle of the essay, he means to indicate that we in the emerging church have placed too much weight on "relational" or "experiential" theories of truth. The gospel is true, Colson seems to be saying, regardless of your human experience of that truth.
"But philosophically, the obvious follow-up question is, Why? What makes the gospel true, especially if those of us in the world have no experience of its truthfulness? "
Now, I don't want to put words in Jones' mouth, but did he not just say that truth is dependent on experience? That the primary, or perhaps only way to know something is true is to experience it? Did he not repudiate the notion that something can be true in and of itself, before or independent of the perception of the knower?
"We are subjective human beings, trapped in our own skins and inevitably influenced by the communities in which we find ourselves."
Now the question I have is simple, but first I need to define what I would mean by "objective".
I believe what folks like Colson, Francis Schaeffer and others would say, and what I would certainly say, is that God created a real world in which things really exist in and of themselves. Creation is not a set of perceptions in the minds of individuals. You and I may disagree about aspects of our interpretation of an event, or our description of an object, but this does not mean the event did not occur or the object does not exist. A tree is a tree, an elephant is an elephant, and no amount of interpretation can change the elephant into a tree.
While it is true that our biases color our understanding of many things, biases do not obliterate them. This is practical and obvious. Schaeffer used to argue that if one cannot live consistently within philosophicalal system, it could not be true. If objectivity is totally discredited, how would our financial systems operate? When I deposit a check for $382.95 at the local bank, I have a very high confidence that any bank teller at that bank will know exactly what those numerical symbols represent, and if I withdraw that amount, I am reasonably certain the number of bills and coins I get will be correct.
And ultimately, God Himself is the ultimate object. That's what Colson is saying. My belief in God does not determine his existence. He exists objectively, independent of my perception. It seems McLaren and Jones and other emergent leaders overplay the influence of perception.
It seems to me correct to say that we have to account for the influence of culture on perception, but we have always known that. I was taught hermeneutics at a very conservative and probably "fundamentalist" and "modernist" Bible college. It was very clear to me then that it was necessary to understand first century Jewish culture to understand the New Testament and totally wrong to read modern assumptions into the text.
But the opposite error may be worse, to assume, as Jones states, that "We are subjective human beings, trapped in our own skins". To completely discount the possibility of objectivity seems to me to deny the very existence of God as someone who stands before the creation of any human consciousness that could "experience" him. And if there are objects that exist, regardless of human perception or lack thereof, then there can be a probability that more than one human being will perceiveve the real characteristics of that object in substantially the same way. Knowledge of any sort depends on this. Science could not exist without it. Heck, a play by play radio broadcast of a football game would not be possible without this.
The simple question...So, here are the simple questions emergents MUST answer, in my mind to be taken seriously by old fogies like me. Are there certain things that are true for all people in all places, all times and all cultures? Are there things which are NOT dependent on perception?
In most of what I read, McLaren and Jones could not answer those in the affirmative and if they could, they would refuse to do so.
No comments:
Post a Comment