Engaging a Postmodern Epistemology
This is an excerpt from my last paper, Incarnating Christian Worship in Postmodernity p48-51. [I'm sorry, the footnotes would not copy over. You can find them if you go to the original paper.]
Engaging a Postmodern Epistemology
Our missional desire to engage our culture leads us to be an incarnational manifestation of the Body of Christ within this culture. More essential to this goal than forms, elements or methods of worship, is the ethos of our community and worship gathering. This ethos is formed in part by our epistemology. This has been a point of significant tension within the Christian community. Some suggest that there is no room for interaction with a postmodern epistemology. Others, like the younger Evangelicals noted by Webber, find themselves already operating in a Christian postmodern epistemology.
Access to Truth
We can affirm with postmodernity that our access to truth is limited. We are biased by the historical reality of our time and culture. The multiple manifestations of Christian worship each founded on scripture are one example of this bias. More significantly than our context, we are limited by the paradigms (which are informed by our context) in which we understand and organize knowledge. Our paradigms serve us, but they are limited. Further we are not aware of their limitations until we adopt new paradigms and consider the old through them. Our recognition of the limitations of our context and our internal mental framework causes us to state (and hold) our knowledge with some humility. We are not aware of the limitations of our knowledge. For instance, we are not aware of the ways in which we overemphasize one aspect of scripture over another. We are not aware of the ways in which we have unwittingly baptized our culture. We are not aware of the ways in which we shape our perception of knowledge to fit our internal framework rather than modify that framework. For these reasons, we state our knowledge with the expectation that future generations may look back on us through new lenses and ask, how could they not see that they uncritically endorsed, for instance, American consumerism?
The recognition that there are limitations to our own paradigm leads us to present knowledge with humility and to explore the products of other paradigms. This humility is a bridge to our postmodern culture. As Leslie Newbigin states in The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society,
He says further that we cannot justify our perspective with argument and reason. Rather, a believer “can only say to his unbelieving neighbor, stand here with me and see if you don’t see the same pattern that I do.” Within this epistemology, we do not convince someone of the merit of our belief by argument from authority. Rather, we invite them to come into our community and see our truth lived out and expressed in our actions, in our relationship and in our ministry to the world as the Body of Christ.
Essence of Truth
Postmodernity is amorphous. It is clear that postmodern philosophy endorses the stance that all truth is socially constructed, i.e. that there is no absolute truth, that there is no truth independent of the context of a particular time and place. In this philosophy of the essence of truth, there is no universal truth. There is nothing that is necessarily true across all time and culture.
It is not certain that this belief has been widely adopted within postmodernity. An optimistic view is that postmodernity is skeptical of, rather than entirely dismissive of, absolute truth. In contrast, we within postmodern Christianity continue to affirm at least some universal truth. We unapologetically believe that God is truth and that God and God’s truth exist completely independent of time and space, let alone the cultural contexts of any particular community.
A Missional Application of This Epistemology
Combining the humility of our recognition of a limited access to truth and our affirmation that God is universal truth, we can approach our culture by inviting people to come and see our truth. As stated before, we can invite a non-believer to come and experience the truth lived out within our community. Once she encounters it, it is our hope she will affirm that it is true for her, and move past her skepticism of universal truth to affirm that this is not just a particular truth, but truth that transcends all time and culture.
Engaging a Postmodern Epistemology
Our missional desire to engage our culture leads us to be an incarnational manifestation of the Body of Christ within this culture. More essential to this goal than forms, elements or methods of worship, is the ethos of our community and worship gathering. This ethos is formed in part by our epistemology. This has been a point of significant tension within the Christian community. Some suggest that there is no room for interaction with a postmodern epistemology. Others, like the younger Evangelicals noted by Webber, find themselves already operating in a Christian postmodern epistemology.
Access to Truth
We can affirm with postmodernity that our access to truth is limited. We are biased by the historical reality of our time and culture. The multiple manifestations of Christian worship each founded on scripture are one example of this bias. More significantly than our context, we are limited by the paradigms (which are informed by our context) in which we understand and organize knowledge. Our paradigms serve us, but they are limited. Further we are not aware of their limitations until we adopt new paradigms and consider the old through them. Our recognition of the limitations of our context and our internal mental framework causes us to state (and hold) our knowledge with some humility. We are not aware of the limitations of our knowledge. For instance, we are not aware of the ways in which we overemphasize one aspect of scripture over another. We are not aware of the ways in which we have unwittingly baptized our culture. We are not aware of the ways in which we shape our perception of knowledge to fit our internal framework rather than modify that framework. For these reasons, we state our knowledge with the expectation that future generations may look back on us through new lenses and ask, how could they not see that they uncritically endorsed, for instance, American consumerism?
The recognition that there are limitations to our own paradigm leads us to present knowledge with humility and to explore the products of other paradigms. This humility is a bridge to our postmodern culture. As Leslie Newbigin states in The Gospel in a Pluralistic Society,
It is essential to the integrity of our witness to… [our Christian faith]… that we recognize that to be its witnesses does not mean to be the possessors of all truth. It means to be placed on the path by which we are led toward the truth. The apophatic tradition in theology has always insisted on the fact that no human image or concept can grasp the full reality of God.
He says further that we cannot justify our perspective with argument and reason. Rather, a believer “can only say to his unbelieving neighbor, stand here with me and see if you don’t see the same pattern that I do.” Within this epistemology, we do not convince someone of the merit of our belief by argument from authority. Rather, we invite them to come into our community and see our truth lived out and expressed in our actions, in our relationship and in our ministry to the world as the Body of Christ.
Essence of Truth
Postmodernity is amorphous. It is clear that postmodern philosophy endorses the stance that all truth is socially constructed, i.e. that there is no absolute truth, that there is no truth independent of the context of a particular time and place. In this philosophy of the essence of truth, there is no universal truth. There is nothing that is necessarily true across all time and culture.
It is not certain that this belief has been widely adopted within postmodernity. An optimistic view is that postmodernity is skeptical of, rather than entirely dismissive of, absolute truth. In contrast, we within postmodern Christianity continue to affirm at least some universal truth. We unapologetically believe that God is truth and that God and God’s truth exist completely independent of time and space, let alone the cultural contexts of any particular community.
A Missional Application of This Epistemology
Combining the humility of our recognition of a limited access to truth and our affirmation that God is universal truth, we can approach our culture by inviting people to come and see our truth. As stated before, we can invite a non-believer to come and experience the truth lived out within our community. Once she encounters it, it is our hope she will affirm that it is true for her, and move past her skepticism of universal truth to affirm that this is not just a particular truth, but truth that transcends all time and culture.
