Brad Anderson has some interesting thoughts on Augustine, the knowledge of God, and its relation to (post-)modern thinking.
In his short summary of the movement from modernism to post-modern basics, he remarks that,
This shift in thinking is what has allowed faith to enter back into the public arena of thought � because in the postmodern context, �faith� is as valid an interpretive framework as feminism, post-colonialism and many others are.
Of course, I’d like to add that what is direly lacking in post-modernism is any kind of validation to that faith — “true faith” isn’t an objective category any more. The only thing that may lead to the discovery (no, that’s too modernist — the definition) of “true faith” (where “true” is a function of a particular context in post-modernism) is through the consensus of the community. And that is usually derrived from pure pragmatic thinking: We’ll accept whatever seems to work for us.
Whatever we may think about this kind of “truth” and the underlying epistemology, it highlights the importance of living a highly practical faith that “works” so well that the people around us cannot but acknowledge its truth. As the old saying goes, we’ll preach the word at all times (but “preaching”, again, would be very modernist), only we’ll use much more than words.
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good thoughts, christoph. you actually beat me to it, but i’m working on a post dealing with the ‘living out’ aspect that is, as you say, attractive to the world around us. i’d also be interested in your thoughts on what you mention about community as validating particular hermeneutics or truth claims. you’ve probably read more on this than i have, but i’d like to think there are alternatives to absolute foundationalism and free-for-all anything goes non-foundationalism. i think praxis plays a big part in this, but i haven’t really thought it through enough. anyway, thanks again for your post, it’s made me think a bit harder on the issue.
Okay, let me elaborate a bit on this (I really like to discuss this, since all of this will be somehow part of my Ph.D. dissertation):
First of all, we need to realize that full-fledged non-foundationalism is simply not livable: I’m going to take language as an example, since it is very much discussed by post-modern philosophers. Now, Mr. Derrida, or Mr. Rorty will tell you that language is nothing but a mass of empty signifiers. Meaning is never inherent in those, but it is attached by the interpreter. However, if we’d try to live this out to its full extent, human communication would simply be impossible. You might attach a completely different meaning to my words than I do — you might even understand the exact opposite, if you choose to do so.
Truth — in this case about linguistic signifiers — cannot be completely individual. But since we do not have a metastructure (or metanarrative) to predefine truth for us any more, the new solution is found in the community: from all of the individual truths of its members, the community creates some kind of an “average”, a consensus, in order to be able and live with one another. This process is usually facilitated by the fact that communities mostly consist of somewhat similar people, who will therefore arrive at somewhat similar versions of truth. In other words, their “truths” overlap in part.
One of my favourite real-world examples for the impossibility of living with completely individualized truth version is a traffic light at a pedestrian crossing. Our current community consensus is that a red light means “no crossing the street now.” Of course, anyone could redefine this truth and decide that red means “cross the street.” But when that truck hits you, you’ll know that you can’t live with your own, different truth in practice.
Second, the “individual” who creates “truth” needs to be re-examined. Many post-modern thinkers have come to modify their view of the observer’s thinking self. Just as one of the basic tenets of post-modernism claims that observed truth is always affected by the person of the observer, so the person of the observer is — in turn — affected by the truth he has observed and assimilated. In other words, the “self” never remains the same, but is trapped in a process of perpetual change. Thus, even the same observation by the same individual might not lead to the same definition of truth twice. Therefore, individual “self” cannot serve as a proper source of truth.
Only the community, which remains much more constant in its averaging consensus , can provide some kind of stable version of truth. Of course, even the community consensus is based on perpetually changing truth versions and therefore itself perpetually changing, but as it is an “average”, changes will be much smaller and much slower in effect.
i totally agree that a pure nonfoundationalism is not possible, and the the individual as ‘truth maker’ is also a fallacy. (just so you know, i might need to borrow your illustrations for the future!)
am i following you correctly in saying that you think the shift to communities as bearers of truth is not such a bad thing? and if so, what about competing truth claims among communities? is this where truth conveyed in ‘praxis’ comes in to play?
Antti Hirviniemi: Knowledge of God
Antti Hirviniemi has joined our recent discussion on post-modernism and the knowledge of God by posting to his own blog. In his summary of my statements about post-modern epistemology, he remarks that [...] Christoph takes a generally pessimistic (perh…
You are following me correctly: I find the move toward the community very positive. Of course, I am aware of the possible problems arising from this model, but I think they are answered by the fact that there is one very special community: the people of God, i.e. the Spirit-filled community.
I think by acknowledging the work of the Spirit within this community, a number of problems are eliminated:
(1) There might be provision for (objective?) access to a higher, absolute truth — Yes, if you’ve read my working definition, you’ll know that I insist on retaining the Christian faith as a meta-narrative. The work of the Spirit in the believer should enable us to overcome certain human limitations.
(2) There definitely is provision for a number of sources for theology, arising out of this community:
(a) Tradition, i.e. the tradition of the Spirit-filled community, i.e. the proliferation of whatever truth this community has discovered (yes, I am actually using discovered here!) by the help of the Spirit.
(b) Scripture, which should of course be number one, but follows more logically here, since it is simply an inscripturation of the original community tradition, prompted and inspired by the Holy Spirit.
(c) Reason, which has to be taken into account because it necessarily affects the individual’s truth position, out of which the community truth is then “compiled.” Reason can be listed as a valid source here, because we need to assume that, if you’re indwelled by the Spirit, your reason is somehow affected.
(4) The same goes for the experience of the individual believer, which also is affected by the indwelling Holy Spirit, and, in turn, affects the person of the believer and his individual stance on truth.
I have to stop here, because otherwise I’ll write my whole doctoral dissertation right here in this comment. This is exactly my topic, so, if you’d like to know more, my dissertation page would be a good starting point.
aagghh…i can see when you phrase it like this – the people of God as spirit-filled community – why it would be of interest for you phd work. sounds really interesting (and much needed).
couple of points on your points (!): i agree that the christian story can and should be a metanarrative. however, i do think it will take some re-thinking on our part so it’s not a totalizing story that excludes all other stories or dialogues, something that will just not be tolerated in postmodernity (or post-whatever). i think rowan williams, among others, has good stuff to say on this.
secondly, i find it really interesting that you put tradition above scripture on your list. i think you’re on to something here, and i really like the re-incorporation of tradition that we’re seeing today. there’s no reason why community’s that are ‘truth-seeking’ need to be only based in the present; why not pull from the past of our communities as well? and this is possibly another area where we as evangelicals/pentecostals have a lot to learn. our use of tradition has to extend more than 100 years ago.
hopefully i’ll read through your dissertation stuff soon….
[...] I have already mentioned (in one of my replies to Brad Andersen) that I cannot but see the Christian story as a meta-narrative. Its claims to exclusivity, universality, and absolute truth are completely incompatible with the post-modern portrait of a “local story” within a community. Yet, I do think that the story of faith, i.e. the story of the Spirit-filled community, is able to escape the post-modern criticism against meta-narratives for a number of reasons. One of them has just re-surfaced in my reading of Anthony Thiselton’s Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: On Meaning, Manipulation and Promise: In chapter 3 (”Do All Controlling Models in Religion Serve Manipulative Purposes?”) Thiselton refers to the New Testament, to Luther’s “theology of the cross”, to Bonhoeffer’s writings and to Jürgen Moltmann in order to show that the Christian story is not promoting power and glory for its proponents. Criticism levelled against it from the days of Nietzsche through Heidegger, Foucault, and Rorty, has therefore no base: The Christian community is not seeking to promote itself above all other communities. Rather, it is seeking to promote Jesus Christ, the liberator, who sets people free from oppression. But, that’s already another argument … [...]