Christianity Today has a helpful series of exchanges between Collin Hansen, author of Young, Restless and Reformed and Tony Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. The tone of the exchange is friendly and Hansen is doing a good job extracting the real differences between young evangelicals on the Reformed front versus younger evangelicals in the Emergent camp. Jones seems content to talk more about friendship than anything else.
I think Hansen overstates things in his assumption that the difference between young Reformed believers and Emergent believers isn’t primarily theology, but epistemology. There is a growing amount of substantial evidence that would lead one to the conclusion that theology is a key difference between these two streams of spirituality (I hesitate to use the term Christian faith because there is enough about the Emergent conversation and their understanding of the gospel that the term Christian may too broad and perhaps compromising).
But Hansen makes a key distinction about epistemology that I found helpful.
Where we probably differ is not so much on theology, but on epistemology. That is, it seems the difference between the people you profile in Young, Restless, Reformed seem pretty darn sure that they’ve got the gospel right, whereas the Emergents that I hang out with are less sure of their right-ness. In fact, they’re less sure that we, as finite human beings, can get anything all that right.
Here’s another way I’d explain the differences. An American Christian today is beset by globalization, pluralism, and postmodernism (three terms that I use interchangeably). In other words, the world is a confusing mess. I think that conservative, evangelical, Reformed theology offers sure answers spoken in tones of certainty by authority figures. Emergent Christianity, for better and worse, offers more ambiguous answers (and even more questions!) in tones of less certainty — but, hopefully, at least with what Lesslie Newbigin called “proper confidence.”
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May 7, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Jennifer
I would say the theological differences stem from the epistemological differences.
I guess there’s also a value difference that might be even more fundamental than the epistemological differences: Reformed folks are looking for certainty, while Emergents are looking for honesty. That’s not to say the Reformed crowd isn’t being honest. But it does mean that Emergents like me could never honestly say that we have absolute certainty about much of anything. especially once you get cued in to the complexities and contradictions in the Bible.
May 7, 2008 at 2:42 pm
johnaaronmartin
Even with the disclaimer that you are not saying “the Reformed crowd isn’t being honest”, this is in fact what you are saying. Your epistemology dictates that you don’t believe one can know anything with any certainty, and you would absolutely say that anyone who claims to know anything with any certainty is at the very least naive and at most delusional. The middle ground here is one who isn’t being honest with himself or others about what can be known. The reality is that though Emergents say we can’t know anything with any certainty, they would quickly react against those who make absolute propositional statements about anything, thus embracing their own version of absolute truth hiding in the shadows of their postmodern assumptions.
I don’t believe I am looking for certainty; I am looking for truth.
May 7, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Zachary
I agree with Aaron. Emergents want to allow in enough skepticism to conclude that those in the reformed camp are being naive while allowing just enough dogmatism to end up sounding like–well–an emergent.
I think that if Emergents would spend some time actually constructing a decent epistemology instead of rehashing some basic skeptical arguments–generally in a very poor manner–then they might be taken more seriously.
While many within the reformed camp are largely ignorant of Gordon Clark, some are more familiar with his student Car F. H. Henry who carried on some of Clark’s essential teachings. If you want to investigate an epistemology from a reformed perspective that deals with these skeptical arguments, then I would suggest reading some of his works including Three Types of Religious Philosophy, Religion, Reason, and Revelation, and An Introduction to Christian Philosophy. You can also find a bunch of free articles written by Clark and other Clarkians at The Trinity Foundation.
May 7, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Jennifer
Aaron - I do not call Reformed folks dishonest, because I myself have been a Reformed person, who felt she could find the truth, perhaps not with certainty, but with confidence. I lived that way a long time, so I understand that other people can honestly believe in that way. I just couldn’t do it anymore, given the things I’ve read, thought, and experienced.
I’m having trouble with this statement: “The reality is that though Emergents say we can’t know anything with any certainty, they would quickly react against those who make absolute propositional statements about anything, thus embracing their own version of absolute truth hiding in the shadows of their postmodern assumptions.”
I think it’s the classic “If there’s no absolute truth, isn’t that an absolute truth?” line, but you’ve framed it very very carefully. Anyway, nope, I don’t believe we can have absolute certainty about anything, EVEN the fact that folks who claim to have absolute certainty are WRONG. Even the fact that there are no absolutes. Maybe there are absolutes. Maybe some people can know them. So where does that leave us?
Zachary - Gordon Clark, he was a presuppositionalist, wasn’t he? I have very little tolerance for presuppositionalism. I don’t really think it answers anything. Here is my caricature of presuppositionalism: “We recognize that one’s presuppositions make a difference in what one finds to be true. Therefore, it’s important that we approach the quest for truth with the right presuppositions. Which are, miraculously!, precisely those presuppositions that we were born into. Problem solved.” Now, my dealings with presuppositionalists have mainly been with, let’s see, Van Tillians? I believe it is? So it could be that Clarkians are a little more reasonable. But if Clark said anything resembling the caricature I’ve drawn, I want nothing to do with him. If not, I’d be curious, I suppose.
As for Emergents, I don’t really know what “a decent epistemology” looks like. I’m a sociologist at heart, and tend to favor socially constructed understandings of truth, meaning truth isn’t some absolute external reality somewhere off in space, but grows out of the experiences and demands of everyday life together. It’s embedded in cultures. I recognize that that leaves us with no foundations, and am working on that. But again, it seems more honest to me, given the scope of diversity that is easily observable across time and cultures.
May 7, 2008 at 4:54 pm
johnaaronmartin
Everyone is a presuppositionalist - even you, Jennifer.
May 7, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Jennifer
Haha, granted! Everybody’s got their presuppositions. One would just hope that recognizing this would cause one to actually evaluate their own presuppositions and see if they actually have good reasons for holding them. Instead of just accepting it and assuming you’re correct. It’s a big wide world out there; we’ve probably all got a little something to learn.
Darn, I have a hard time talking about presuppositionalism without sounding like being a snobby jerk. I’m sorry.
May 7, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Jennifer
*That “sounding like” was supposed to have a strike through it.
May 7, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Zachary
Again,
Aaron is right on the money.
Also, it’s amazing that you understand how wrong your position is when you say:
I also think that you misunderstand at least Clark’s version of presuppositionalism when you say:
You are not to understand ‘right’ in the sense that a foundationalist or some other such position might understand it. It is your presuppositions that determines what is right in your ’system’.
Clark doesn’t claim this. I don’t think that Van Til claims this. I have not read that Henry claims this. I’m pretty sure that Bahnsen doesn’t claim this. I don’t read much Schaeffer, but I don’t think that he claims this either.
Well I think that your caricature of Van Til is just that: a caricature. I have no love for Van Til, but you’ve gotten him wrong.
I’m not really sure why you would hold to this. This certainly isn’t a sense of ‘truth’ that the vast majority of people use. In what way is Goedel’s theorem true? In what way is quantification logic true then? In what way is arithmetic true? In what way is God’s word true?
What I mean by a decent epistemology is something that can refute total skepticism without a fiat declaration by you or some other emergent that your sociology can refute total skepticism but allow enough in to refute the calvinists. Your position seems to me not to be false, but incoherent.
May 7, 2008 at 8:05 pm
Zachary
While I was typing my last comment, some more was said:
Again, I think that this gets to the heart of your misunderstanding of presuppositionalism. If you had “good reasons” to accept a presupposition, then it would not be a presupposition. Again, just ask yourself, “What constitutes good reasons?” So, that would be your criterion for adjudicating between or amongst competing ‘presuppositions’–I’m retaining the word presupposition here, but, again, I think that you are misusing it. How then does one adjudicate between or amongst competing criteria? Does one have a meta-criterion? Well how does one adjudicate between or amongst competing meta-criteria? A meta-meta-criterion? And so on for quite some time.
Presuppositionalism–at least Clark’s version of it–simply answers the traditional regress argument by rejecting foundationalism (i.e., that there are foundational beliefs that are non-inferentially justified), infinitism (i.e., that an infinite regression of justification is a good thing), and coherentism (i.e., the belief that one’s justification for a belief is a matter of constructing a ‘web’ of interrelated and consistent beliefs where I might justify P with Q and Q with R and R with P).
Clarkians assert that not only must one simply choose a dogmatically chosen axiom, but everyone does, in fact, do this. Can you provide a justification for the reliability of memory without first assuming–without good reason–that memory is reliable? Can you do the same for the reliability of our senses? Can you–to the degree that you think logic is ‘truth’–give an account of it without presupposing it? In fact, can you even escape solipsism (i.e., the belief that there is one and only one mind that exists and that it is yours) without making presuppositions that you have no good reason at all to presuppose?
By good reason, one thing that I might mean is something like this: something that either does not beg the question (assume what is at issue) or some reason that is not equally compatible with a competing ’system’.
May 7, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Zachary
Just FYI, there is another comment that I put up that is still awaiting moderation, so that’s why the comment immediate above this one makes reference to a previous post.
May 7, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Jennifer
Yes, I am aware it was a caricature. That’s why I prefaced it with “this is my caricature.” I was hoping you would show me how it’s wrong. Which you’ve begun to do, so thank you.
I’m going to need some examples of presuppositions if this conversation is to continue.
Perhaps I just don’t understand in what context presuppositionalism is actually supposed to be a helpful idea for Christians trying to defend their claims on absolute or “objective” truth. It might give you a phenomenology of how things come to be known, but I don’t see how it can do anything more than describe. If everyone has presuppositions, depending on the system s/he has, then great. So you find Christianity to be true because it fits with your presuppositions. A person for whom Christianity doesn’t fit their presuppositions is therefore no more wrong than you and has no impetus to take what you’re saying seriously. You just disagree on the presuppositional level.
Obviously, I have presuppositions, deep, barely articulable things I find to be true or pleasing that guide the way I approach the world. The problem is that the notion that “everyone has presuppositions that are dogmatically chosen” quickly turns into an excuse to never justify one’s beliefs. And that also keeps one from addressing the need to evaluate one’s beliefs. So there’s no reason to change, and in fact, you have good reason to never ever change. And I think that is a recipe for ignorance. willful ignorance.
Also, it’d be helpful if you could clarify what you mean by “truth.” It’s too ambiguous of a word. Yes, we commonly speak of theorems and mathematical principles being “true.” It is also true that I prefer pepperoni pizza to other pizzas. Is that an absolute truth? an objective truth? It is also true that I love my friend, Jonathan, and because of that, it is true that there are certain ways he deserves to be treated by me, because I want to treat people I love well. That’s a bundle of “truths” that are entirely dependent on me and my own experiences, commitments, and preferences. It is also true that the thing I am sitting in front of is called, in English, a “computer.” There’s an example of a constructed truth. because language is humanly constructed. And language frames the way we think about the world around us.
I don’t really know what we’re talking about, so this comment is probably nonsense. Basically, give me an example of a presupposition. And tell me what presuppositions proves or does for you. And tell me what you mean by truth, and which “truths” are important to you, and if you believe in “absolute truth” or “objective truth” and give me an example or two, and explain why you feel you have good reason to believe in absolute truth as a construct and why you believe those truths in particular.
Actually, you don’t have to do any of those things. I have spent the past week writing 35 pages for school, and I am pretty tired of trying to organize and defend my thoughts. So, I may not respond if you do all of those things. But I would read them.
G’day.
May 8, 2008 at 12:16 am
Zachary
Well, I would think that in the context of our discussion, some great examples of presuppositions that many people take for granted are reliability of memory and the reliability of the senses. I would say that the claim that there is a God is also a presupposition.
One of the oldest skeptical arguments is the regress problem which states something like this: if I claim to know that P (where P is any proposition such as ‘I am sitting in front of a computer right now’
then most accounts of knowledge assert that in order for this claim to amount to knowledge one must have some kind of justification for believing that P–where ‘justification’ means something like ‘good reason’ or some might make a stronger claim that justification is whatever it is that guarantees the truthfulness of the claim; though most epistemologists these days would not want to make such a strong claim.
So, if I claim to know that P, how is this justified? Usually we justify our beliefs by prior justified beliefs. So, I know that I am in front of a computer because I know that Q and that Q somehow entails P–where Q is some justified true belief. Now, the problem starts again–this is why they call it a regress. How is Q justified? If we continue this process forever, then we get what is called infinitism where we continue our justificatory claims ad infinitum. Most people find this option unpalatable. It’s like falling in an infinitely deep hole and having an infinitely long ladder. It still doesn’t help you get to the top.
The foundationalists claim that the regress comes to an end somewhere because there are certain truths that are foundational because they are non-inferentially justified. That is, they receive their justification in a way that is different from the kinds of propositions we have in our regress. Personally, I find this view unacceptable for fairly complex reasons dealing with exactly what these foundational truths are and how they relate to further truths.
The coherentist says that you don’t need to go on forever nor do you need to look for some foundationalist truths. You can simply create a circle big enough such that P is justified by Q and Q is justified by R . . . and Y is justified by Z and Z is justified by P. You have a circle here, but the coherentists claim that if the circle is large enough then you have a web of beliefs that can support themselves. A lot of people can’t choke down the circularity.
Clark proposed what he called dogmatism or scripturalism or Christian rationalism.
Clark noted that the empiricist assumed his principle (something like ‘all knowledge comes through sensation’). The logical positivists’ had a presupposition similar to that: in order for a sentence to be meaningful, it must–at least in principle–be verifiable; or to put it another way, the meaning of a sentence simply is whatever it would take to verify or to falsify the sentence. Clark thought that he was entitled to his own assumption; his assumption was that ‘the bible is the word of God.’
From this follows all the truths of the bible.
Now, how is this helpful? Well, how would you refute the empiricist or the logical positivist? Clark thought that it was rather easy; point out that the primary principle of the empiricist cannot be empirically verified. And the principle of the logical positivists is meaningless on their own terms. You have refuted the opposition. Or as Paul says, you have torn down everything that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.
It is not the apologist’s job to change hearts. Rather, he is to refute the opposition and then when the opposition has been silenced, he is to get a word in edgewise and demonstrate the consistency of the Christian system.
You can prove the truthfulness of Christianity in the axiomatic or geometric sense. You can deduce certain theorems from the axiom of revelation. This, however, is of no use to those who do not accept the axiom of revelation. We are back to the problem of the criterion. How to adjudicate between competing axioms or criteria.
Well, I think that you are misusing the term phenomenology. Usually that tends to refer to the subjective experience of consciousness. That’s not what Clark is about. And if by “how things come to be known” you mean how one comes to possess the content of a belief, then that is not what Clark is interested in either. If you that phrase you mean something like ‘how a belief comes to be justified and thus become knowledge–in the proper sense’ then that is what Clark is about.
Clark is interested in how do we come to possess knowledge? The scriptures are clear that all wisdom and knowledge is hid in Christ and that only to believers has the mind of the Lord been revealed (in the Scriptures).
Yet one of the problems that I think you emergents pick up on–at least partially–is that no text comes with its interpretation. The interpretation is not something supplied by the text; it is always something brought to the text. I agree it is rather a naive way to view exegesis of Scripture to try to remove all your own biases in order to get to what the text really says. It’s little black marks on white paper. It doesn’t ’say’ anything.
Yet, the problem is that you emergents want to entertain enough skepticism to really broaden our theological commitments. You do not understand that the case is much more radical than you care to admit. If no text supplies its own interpretation and if it must be supplied by the interpreter, then you are just as unjustified in concluding that it says anything at all as you believe the calvinist is unjustified in concluding that it means X, Y, and Z.
In your haste to make this conclusion, you have missed the problem that I laid out before. How on earth would you justify your belief in the law of contradiction to someone whose logical apparatus allowed for contradictions? What if I claimed that it is a perfectly OK thing to conclude that A is both B and not-B in the same respect. You can launch into a very rigorous defense of modern predicate logic, but I will only yawn and accuse you of begging the question–i.e., assuming what you ought to prove; for you must assume the invalidity of my logic in order to prove your point. Or what’s even worse, what if you accused me of begging the question against you, but I claimed that in my world begging the question was a good thing.
Now, it seems to me your only recourse is to turn to people around you and say, “Now that chap is insane!” But you haven’t justified your beliefs in any meaningful sense. You’ve simply stated your views a bit louder and perhaps with a bit more emotion. If that’s justification, then I guess philosophy is a lot easier than I thought.
Again, let’s be clear. What do you mean by ‘reason’ here? Let’s suppose that you are the Descartes of the Second Meditation. In that Meditation, Descartes endeavored to doubt everything that could be doubted. He thought that perhaps he was sitting by the fire holding a piece of paper. Yet, he could doubt it and so he doubted it. Now, you are that Descartes. How on earth would I convince you that you are, in fact, sitting in front of a fire holding a piece of paper? Anything that I say to you, you would not count as evidence or a reason to believe the truthfulness of that claim.
Or let us consider the argument between a believer and an unbeliever; I should say to the unbeliever that asks what reason there is to believe that God exists that the Bible gives many reasons. He will quickly respond that that is no reason at all. Why isn’t it a reason? Because he does not accept my presuppositions.
I do not find it that ambiguous of a word. I would say truth is what God thinks.
I really don’t understand what’s being said here. I’m also not sure what you mean by absolute truth and objective truth. I would say objective truth is something that is true regardless of what anyone (except God, of course) thinks about the matter. In that case, I would say that there is no such thing as subjective truth–in so far as you want to oppose subjective and objective. If you wanted to claim that your liking pizza was somehow a subjective truth because it was dependent upon your thinking that you liked it, then we might be able to fudge that, but I think I would probably disagree. I don’t think that you are the truthmaker, but God is; that is, you like it because God thinks that you like it. Furthermore, there is the psychological issue of whether you have control over your likes and dislikes. So, yeah.
Again, not sure what you mean by ‘constructed truth’.
Well, I would want to know what you mean by your comments on language. Do you mean to imply that language frames the way we think about the world in such a way that it prevents us from thinking truly about the world? That, I would disagree with. Language is something God uses; language was a gift of God; language does not distort the world, it enables us to think at all; everything that can be known is capturable by language.
May 8, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Jennifer
Well, yes, here is the heart of my problem: “Clark thought that he was entitled to his own assumption; his assumption was that ‘the bible is the word of God.’” This is my problem with presuppositionalism. I don’t think this is a comparable belief to “my senses are reliable.” It’s not as though trusting sense data is somehow arbitrary. It’s a very simple principle, and it follows from the fact that when I trust my senses, I get reliable results. I also think Clark’s claim needs a lot of explanation. What do we mean by ‘the word of God’? Does that mean the Bible must stand as one, coherent, systematic voice? It doesn’t. And of course, coherency and systematization are modern categories, so the Bible doesn’t necessarily have to be those things for it to be the word of God. But for me to know how to apply “the Bible is the word of God,” I need to know what that means, and in what sense the Bible is the word of God. To be honest, there’s a lot of trouble in the Bible. You also have the fact that the Bible is written in the voice of human beings. So when Paul says “Do not do this or that,” those are commands from Paul, historically. The same way “I was in prison” are statements from Paul. God was not in prison, for instance. In what way is “I was in prison” the word of God? In what sense is Psalm 137:8-9 the word of God? (”O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is he who repays you for what you have done to us- he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
And how do I appropriate that?
Also, our understanding of what ‘the word of God’ is and how the Bible’s being the word of God determines its use is very much culturally relative. I don’t feel like explaining that claim. “The scriptures are clear that all wisdom and knowledge is hid in Christ and that only to believers has the mind of the Lord been revealed (in the Scriptures).” The Scriptures are not clear about much of anything, including this.
Pardon my use of phenomenology. I suppose that’s what happens when you take your vocabulary from dialogue instead of dictionaries. What I mean is, presuppositionalism might be able to describe how your system fits together, but it will never be able to absolutize or ground Christianity in ultimate reality. It can show why you think Christianity is rooted in ultimate reality: because you presuppose it. Ok. “Clark is interested in how do we come to possess knowledge?” This is a different question than what is true?
“Yet, the problem is that you emergents want to entertain enough skepticism to really broaden our theological commitments. You do not understand that the case is much more radical than you care to admit.” You’ve made the whole “If you’re gonna go skeptic, why not go all the way?” move several times, and I’m not interested in it. Total skepticism is impractical; the absence of skepticism is ignorance.
“I would say truth is what God thinks.” Is what God thinks also the “objective truth”? And since the Bible is the word of God, we can say the Bible is objective truth? How is Psalm 137:9 objective truth?
“I don’t think that you are the truthmaker, but God is; that is, you like it because God thinks that you like it.” I disagree.
Language - Did God create the English language? Hebrew? Koine Greek? Language is fluid. It changes over time as it reflects the culture that uses it. Language doesn’t keep us from thinking “truly,” because there can be no concept of truth without language. So truth is dependent on language. which is humanly constructed.
May 8, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Jennifer
When I say truth is constructed and embedded in culture, this is what I mean:
- “The frog does not jump in the daytime without reason.”
- “He who does not shave you does not cut you.”
- “In a court of fowls, the cockroach never wins his case.”
Yes, these African proverbs are true.
May 8, 2008 at 7:18 pm
hensleyzachary
I don’t think that it’s worth saying anything else except to respond to this. For if you can’t get the basic point of presuppositionalism, then the rest won’t make any sense either.
That claim is that it is arbitrary. Reread what I wrote if you care to know why.
May 9, 2008 at 9:06 pm
Jennifer
I disagree
May 9, 2008 at 11:31 pm
hensleyzachary
Well, I mean I’ve challenged you to prove it without assuming it to be true. You’ve yet to do that. I can only surmise because it is impossible. You’ve reverted simply to declaring that it is so. Such a response only reiterates my point.
May 10, 2008 at 4:57 am
Jennifer
Sure. The thing is, Zachary, I’m not really interested in defending my belief system to you. What it comes down to is, I agree that foundational beliefs are “arbitrarily” chosen (although I don’t really think it’s arbitrary, I think it’s based on reasons that aren’t necessarily grounded on rational principles, but are still reasons nonetheless), but I have different “arbitrarily chosen” beliefs than you do. And I have no interest in subscribing to your arbitrarily chosen beliefs. That is probably the reason I’ve sort of been resisting what you’re saying. I keep forgetting to say “Yes, I essentially agree with you.” My mistake. No, I don’t think my beliefs are any more sure than yours. But my beliefs are what make the best sense of the world as I see it, and that’s why I choose those beliefs.
If this seems inconsistent with anything I’ve said previously, it’s probably because in my system, the claim that “the Bible is the word of God” doesn’t entirely make sense. Well, and that’s not entirely true, because I do think God speaks through the Bible. Perhaps it’s that I don’t think your entire system (which I’m mostly guessing at, since I haven’t actually asked you to articulate it fully) follows from that principle. That’s all.
May 10, 2008 at 5:25 am
Jennifer
Wait, I have one more question.
The idea that everyone’s beliefs are based on arbitrarily chosen presuppositions sounds really postmodern to me (and remember, postmodernism isn’t a dirty word for me, so I don’t mean that as an insult). Because it seems to allow room for people to have different starting points, which in turn create whole worldviews that are in conflict. That’s great. But in, say, Clark’s worldview, he believes his presupposition about the Bible means that he has access to universal, absolute and objective truth. But his worldview isn’t grounded in “reality,” it’s grounded in those presuppositions. How can you claim to have access to absolute truth recognizing that your notions of that truth are grounded in your presuppositions? What am I missing?
You talked about infinitism and coherentism and foundationalism and all that, and ok, but I still don’t understand why a presuppositionalist could claim their beliefs to be absolute truth. How is that? Just by saying, arbitrarily, that your presuppositions are right?
May 10, 2008 at 3:16 pm
hensleyzachary
Again, you continue to obfuscate. First, you take away with your right hand what you gave with your left. You agree that they are arbitrarily chosen, but that they are not arbitrary.
And while I think it best to avoid the term ‘foundational’ in regards to presuppositions because of the possible confusion with foundationalism, you seem to misunderstand the very terms that you use. If you have some beliefs that are ‘foundational’ and yet these beliefs are based further still on prior beliefs, then–and here is where you really ought to pay attention–they aren’t foundational.
Again, this misses the point. Your presuppositions in a way construct the world that you live in. It designates what are phenomena to be explained in your worldview. Thus, for the marxist one phenomenon that needs to be explained is historical materialism. However, this is simply not a phenomenon that needs to be explained for a non-marxist.
You still seem to be stuck in this view that facts are simply presented and not manufactured. The fact of divine sovereignty is not a fact for the atheist. The fact of a closed mechanical system of the world is not a fact for the theist. The fact that electrons are whirling around is not a fact for certain kinds of scientific anti-realists.
So when you make this claim above, you are claiming that your worldview answers the questions that your worldview asks of the world–or another way might be to say is that your worldview explains better the world that it creates than any other worldview.
First, I’m really not sure what you mean by absolute truth . . . as opposed to what? Truth that is only relatively true? 2+2 is 4 for white people but 5 for asians? What does that even mean?
I think that you are confusing yourself when you say that Clark says that his presuppositions grant him access to truth, as if they were some kind of ticket that let him go on some kind of metaphysical roller coaster.
In order to start thinking, one must start somewhere. While there are many reasons why you in fact do accept the presuppositions you do accept, there are no reasons that imply the truthfulness of your presuppositions–or else they are not presuppositions (things that are presupposed).
In order to start thinking, everyone everywhere takes some things for granted in order to get the ball rolling–as it were. Clark recognizes that any and all of these first principles are arbitrarily chosen, for one cannot have prior reasons (in the sense defined above) because that would mean that one had thought prior to thought, which is absurd.
Clark assumes that the bible is the word of God, and from this follows many truths that he can deduce from the Scriptures. He nowhere claims to be able to prove that his assumptions are true. But, of course, this is because this would be impossible.
That is the point I think that you are missing. It impossible to think before one thinks.
And the question that you should be asking (if you claim to agree with me so) is not why Clark thinks he believes anything to be true or why he thinks his assumptions grant him truth, but why YOU think you happen to believe anything to be true.
The beauty of this medium is that everything that I’ve said is still typed. I would encourage you to reread what I’ve written–especially also the comment that I put on Aaron’s most recent post.
It is simply nonsensical to say that one has reasons for one’s presuppositions.
And I’m not really sure what is meant by your question of why one would believe that one’s arbitrarily chosen assumptions are true. I would think that the word ‘arbitrary’ would be a dead give-a-way to the answer.
You’re trying to put new wine into old wineskins. You’re looking for some kind of objective justification for one’s presuppositions. But that is the very system that is being rejected here.
May 10, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Jennifer
Ok, so you don’t believe in objective truth. Great.
Am I frustrating you yet?
This is hilarious to me: “First, I’m really not sure what you mean by absolute truth . . . as opposed to what? Truth that is only relatively true? 2+2 is 4 for white people but 5 for asians? What does that even mean?”
No. Absolute truth as opposed to manufactured truth. For instance, it is a fact for the theist that God is sovereign, and it is a fact for the atheist that the universe is a closed mechanical system. So those facts are not universally true for everyone. This is what I meant by the term “constructed truth.” Sort of.
May 10, 2008 at 4:40 pm
hensleyzachary
I wouldn’t say I’m frustrated, but I could see how frustrating it might be if someone kept attributing positions to his/her interlocutor that the interlocutor did not accept. For instance, I’ve explicitly stated that I do believe in ‘objective truth’.
Then I would encourage you to read more in epistemology. Absolute is opposed to relative in just about all the literature. I’m still not sure what ‘manufactured truth’ even means.
No, you’re just equivocating and confusing yourself.
May 10, 2008 at 4:57 pm
johnaaronmartin
I admittedly haven’t had time to thoroughly read every response between Zac and Jennifer, but it seems to me that one issue being debated is that truth is confined to the holder of that truth. I would argue that real truth - absolute, biblical, Spirit-revealed truth, transcends that human mind, and yet, can be known (though not fully) by the human mind. This limited knowledge does not distort or color the truth in any way, as it is revealed as truth, though the mind and finite human perspective may.
But isn’t this part of what it means to live by faith and not by sight (2Cor 5:7)? We must embrace in faith what God has revealed as truth. An aspect of debates like this that troubles me (though I am thankful for the dialogue) is that it seems to become our attempt to live by sight.
I may have rushed to judgment because I haven’t taken time to read, so if I have, forgive my ignorance.
May 10, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Jennifer
Zachary - Manufactured truth was your term. I assumed you knew what you meant by it.
Aaron - I appreciate you saying that. It’s a fine line, isn’t it? trying to hold beliefs responsibly while also living by faith? I think that balance is part of what we’re trying to get at with this discussion. What troubles me about this discussion is that after 24 comments, I still can’t seem to convince Zachary that I understand what he’s saying. and I probably don’t. still hasn’t illuminated much for me, so it’s starting to feel sort of pointless. But we gave it a good try.
May 10, 2008 at 9:46 pm
hensleyzachary
Jennifer:
I know what I mean by my terms. It’s that you keep using terms in ways that I’ve never seen them used in any of the literature or you are using terms that I previously used in ways that I didn’t use them.
What troubles me is that one would think that after only 24 relatively short comments one would have a good grasp on an issue that many people have spent literally years and years reading, writing, and thinking over it and are still working through it.
That’s why I suggested those books and that website which has a bunch of free articles to get you started. If you’re interested, try it out. If not, then that’s fine. It’s not my job to convince anyone.
One last thing that does trouble me is your seeming hostility to start your assumptions with God’s revelation. I assume you claim to be a believer and you now claim to be in substantial agree with my position (which I am still unconvinced of) and yet you want to start with some other assumptions. To me, that’s more telling than any thing that has been said in this discussion.
Aaron:
I would want to flesh out the ambiguity in the word ‘transcends’ and when you say ‘though not fully’.
The problem is that some theologians (including Van Til–though Van Tillians will claim that this is a misreading) claim that our knowledge of God or our knowledge of anything is at best analogical and Van Til claims that at no point does our knowledge and God’s knowledge coincide. Some ‘reformed’ (and I use that term VERY loosely: Bavinck) actually argue that we can know nothing positive about God and that at best our knowledge is only negative.
This I utterly reject as completely unbiblical. Or we could reference the neo-orthodox’s claim that God is totally Other. Or that God and the medium of conceptuality are mutually exclusive.
Those don’t seem to be the kinds of things that you want to say, but it’s a bit ambiguous, so I would just want to cash that out a bit more.
The same goes with the ‘though not fully’. Quantitatively, I would agree; i.e., we don’t know as much as God does. But if we know something we know it just as God knows it–I mean, we learn it in different ways obviously: we discursively, God intuitively (for God has never ‘learned’ anything).
Well, I think that of all the positions I’ve come across only a Clarkian-type presuppositionalism maintains this concept that you bring up: namely, that we are not God.
I think that this (knowledge based on revelation/belief) is what Paul is talking about when he says “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard” or when Jesus tells Peter that “flesh and blood” did not reveal truth to him, or when Augustine said that “I believe in order to understand.”
I would have to know specifically what parts of the debate you are referring to in order to weigh in on this. I would maintain that attempting to work out all implications of God’s revelation is not trying to ‘walk by sight’. So, I would think that my position isn’t falling victim to that error–but, of course, that’s just me.
May 10, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Jennifer
I agree that everyone starts with presuppositions. I do not agree that “the Bible is the word of God” is a matter that can be presupposed. Also, as we’ve discussed, there’s the problem of interpretation, so I don’t feel like it’s a claim that gets you very far.
I have never had this much trouble with someone understanding the way I use words, or with someone constantly suggesting I’m misusing them. Either everyone else I’ve ever interacted with is just being polite, or else we just operate in different circles. But either way, that break down in communication makes it impossible for me to either inquire into what you’re saying, or to refute it, so I feel pretty powerless in this conversation. Maybe I’ll read some Clark, although my summer reading list is already more than I can manage.
May 11, 2008 at 12:23 am
hensleyzachary
After having spent the past year teaching philosophy to undergraduates, I would say that I think people are much less clear than they realize. Ambiguities abound in colloquial language. When we are using colloquial language to talk about informal things, then there usually isn’t a problem. However, when people then try to speak about issues that require very strict distinctions to be made with unclear colloquial language, then these ambiguities arise all over the place. I’m grading papers right now and it is more evident now than ever before.
That’s what philosophers spend a good deal of their time doing in graduate school doing: learning about the seemingly irrelevant distinctions that have made a huge difference over the centuries in philosophical discourse.
May 11, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Jennifer
You’re right. Ambiguities and inconsistencies do abound. Let me ask you to clarify a few of your own.
“It is simply nonsensical to say that one has reasons for one’s presuppositions.”
“While there are many reasons why you in fact do accept the presuppositions you do accept, there are no reasons that imply the truthfulness of your presuppositions–or else they are not presuppositions (things that are presupposed).”
I’m sorry, are there reasons or aren’t there? I’ve suggested that there are reasons, but those reasons aren’t grounded in rational principles. You’ve suggested this is nonsensical. I’m at a loss.
_____
“I’ve explicitly stated that I do believe in ‘objective truth’.”
“I would say objective truth is something that is true regardless of what anyone (except God, of course) thinks about the matter.”
“your worldview explains the world that it creates.”
Your worldview creates a world. In what sense, then, is objective truth true no matter what anyone thinks?
I don’t believe I am the only problem in this discussion.
May 11, 2008 at 11:04 pm
hensleyzachary
Perhaps you are at a loss because you stopped reading after your bolded selection. Let me quote it again in its entirety:
The earlier quotation of “It is simply nonsensical to say that one has reasons for one’s presuppositions.” was in response to your claims that one’s presuppositions are not arbitrary but that one can have reasons for accepting them.
Let’s illustrate with some basic logic. One system of formal propositional logic has as an axiom schema the following A -> (B -> A) which reads as If A then if B then A. There is no epistemic reason why one would accept it. It’s an axiom. One needs it (in this particular system) in order to start the system. However, there are plenty of pragmatic reasons why one might accept it: namely, that it (along with two other axiom schemata and one rule of inference) lets you deduce all of propositional calculus which purports to capture all of propositional logic.
By way of example, let us suppose that an atheist assumes that all phenomena has a naturalistic explanation. This is something that he could never prove. He has no reason to accept it; that’s why he assumes it. Yet, he has plenty of reasons (pragmatic) why he might accept it: it allows him to marginalize Christians whom he hates.
Again, back to my quotation with the bolded part: just keep reading.
I’m not seeing a problem anywhere else. I directed you to resources where you can study this topic, if you are interested, and then you think it to be a problem with my position because you can’t understand it in a few short comments on a blog? Perhaps you’re just too used to the sound byte culture.
One must understand truth claims. Certainly I don’t think that historical materialism is true. I think that it is false. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Marxist thinks that it is true. I don’t give any weight to hist. mat. at all. Yet, if I simply imposed my system upon the Marxist, then he would simply assert that I’m begging the question.
I do not have “access” to the external world, meaning my senses do not acquaint me with the external world. One needs only to study the history of science (in particular pay attention to Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend). One scientific ‘paradigm’ will tell of a phenomenon that it purports to explain, while the next system doesn’t recognize that particular phenomenon as something to be explained and it will offer some new phenomenon that the old paradigm didn’t recognize as a phenomenon to be explained.
So, in that sense, the only facts that we have “access” to are facts without our system: facts for us. This does not, however, change the fact that there is objective truth. Hence, the illustration that I gave earlier of Popper talking about the peak of a mountain. Just because we are not sure that we are at the peak and can not confirm it, does not change the fact that there is a peak.
Again, I reiterate, this is not a topic that you can fully explore on a few short blog posts. That’s why people still write books. I directed you towards some sources if you are interested. The amount of things that would need to be explained in order for you to work through the system is beyond the task of even 20-something comments (though I have made maybe half, so 15 comments or so). I’m not meaning to insult you, but you are ignorant of the complexities of this subject and that then causes you to miss much of what is being said.
This isn’t because you are incapable of understanding it. Imagine if a physicist tried to explain to you quantum physics in 15 comments on a blog post. It ain’t happening. I’m trying to point you in the right direction and show where you misunderstand presuppositionalism, but you must understand that this is not a substitute for in-depth study (again, only if you are interested).
May 11, 2008 at 11:38 pm
Jennifer
“The beauty of this medium is that everything that I’ve said is still typed. I would encourage you to reread what I’ve written.”
If you were making anything approaching the kind of attempt to respect my thoughts and consider carefully my questions/observations that you are demanding I make for you, I can’t imagine you would continue to accuse me of misunderstanding and ignorance.
If your only response is again to trumpet my ignorance, please do not respond.
May 11, 2008 at 11:52 pm
hensleyzachary
Let me get this straight. We’re talking about a position (presuppostionalism) to which I hold. I would think that it’s an OK assumption to make that I know at least something about it. You openly claim that you don’t know anything about it (i.e., that you are ignorant of it). I then point out that much of your confusion arises from your self-admitted ignorance. You then get offended? It’s almost laughable.
May 12, 2008 at 9:30 pm
johnaaronmartin
I’m not going to censor the last comment.
However, I am asking that this exchange end. In my estimation it has clearly moved beyond Scriptural boundaries for such an exchange as I see very little “gentleness and respect” (1Pet 3:15-16) taking place in the tone of some of these responses.
Jennifer and Zac, you are both welcome to post here, and I appreciate your posts. But I think this conversation has run its course and has moved beyond the topic and become more personal than it appropriate.
I will delete any further posts on this thread related to this discussion.
May 13, 2008 at 3:48 am
ZacHensley.com » For A Good Time . . .
[...] if you have some time to spare, I would encourage you head on over to Aaron Martin’s blog and read a little exchange between some girl named Jennifer and me concerning epistemology–it’s been a while since [...]
May 13, 2008 at 4:00 am
hensleyzachary
Well Aaron, I hope that you won’t delete this, but I’ll try anyways.
While I won’t directly address Jimmy’s comment, I would like to apologize to Jennifer for letting the conversation get to where it got. I would simply like to clarify one or two things (and not continue this discussion). I was no where saying or implying that you were stupid or unable to grasp the topic at hand. What I was trying to say was simply that this is a complex topic and that you had admitted that you were not familiar with it. Even though I said on several occasions that a conversation on this blog post was not going to be adequate, I continued the discussion. That was my fault. I should have simply directed you to appropriate resources and left it at that.
I was directing you to those resources not in an attempt to shut you up, but in an attempt to direct you to where you can read some things (two of those books are around 100 pages or less and that website is full of short, free articles) if you were interested in reading more about Clark. If you’re not, then that’s fine.
I was not intending to communicate that I thought that I was somehow smarter than you–especially with my comment about teaching the undergrads–my comment was meant to explain why it is that problems with ambiguity might be arising in this discussion whereas they might not arise in every day conversations or even conversations about other issues.
Finally, I am all for people to bring critical questions and evaluations against positions to which I hold. I merely think that it’s a good idea to understand the view before one attempts to criticize it.
May 13, 2008 at 4:28 am
Jennifer
Aaron, you’re so nice. I agree, the conversation spiraled, and I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.
Thanks, Zac. I agree, it’s good to understand something before you criticize it, and I know there’s still a lot I could learn about presuppositionalism. Maybe I’ll look into it. I was just trying to deal with what was being presented, but I know that’s not the whole story.