Can we know the truth?

A commentor named Annie left a good comment on my post called "Slippery Theology." I responded in the comments, but thought it deserved a post of its own. I agreed with some of what she said, but disagreed with some of it. I want to be clear that I appreciated the comment and the spirit in which it was offered, and I hope Annie will comment some more, and I hope this doesn't come off as a rant, or as if I am using her as a whipping boy for my own position. You can find the thing I will quote from her in alot of other places, and I'll also be interacting with Brian McLaren on this. So, Annie, if you are out there, please take this as a loving, brotherly interaction, and a desire to address issues that are raised by and applicable to a larger audience.

Annie mentioned that one thing we can take away from the postmodern discussion is the fact that "when it comes to God, we don't understand everything." I couldn't agree more. In fact, as I think about it I wonder if that might not explain something of what the postmodernists are so allergic to. In my response to her in the comments I mentioned that many systematic theologies begin with a section on the incomprehensibility of God. This is something that we can all agree on. However, we all have the tendency, at the end of our studies to come off as if we have totalized God, as if we have Him all figured out.

Where I disagreed with Annie is in her use of the expression "epistemological uncertainty." If by that she and the postmodernists are simply trying to find a technical term to describe their understanding of the fallibility and finitude of human nature, then I'm all for it.

However, that term sounds alot like ancient philosophical skepticism, the idea that leads us to doubt everything and denies the ability to attain certainty of knowledge. Practically speaking it doesn't deny the existence of truth, it denies our ability to know truth.

I can't figure out the difference between the postmodern view of truth and the skeptical notion of truth. If you look at Brian McLaren's Open Letter to Chuck Colson, you can see that he demurs on Colson's idea of objective truth, offers seven different possibilities of what truth can mean and never really comes down on any definition of truth, except to say that truth corresponds to reality. That's vague enough to be completely meaningless.

Augustine dealt with skepticism and came out of it through the realization that "I doubt, therefore I am." He reasoned that for him to doubt he had to exist, so his existence was something he could accept with certainty. From there, if he admitted that there was one thing he could accept with certainty, then there could be other things.

Also, Jesus didn't leave His definition of truth so vague as to merely be that which corresponds to reality. For Jesus, truth has content, and it has an object - Himself. John 8:31-32 says:

31To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Notice the train of thought - how do we know we are Jesus disciples? We know if we hold to His teaching? That's His word, His "logos." If we hold to His teaching we are His disciples and we can know the truth.

I'm not arguing against the postmodernist contention that our culture and our sinful natures and our presuppositions cloud our ability to discern truth. What I am saying is that you need to begin where Jesus begins, with the idea that truth can be known. Do a search in your Bible software on the the Bible Gateway on the phrase "sure of" in the New Testament. Or do a search on the word "know" and you will find that, particularly for Paul, there were lots of things he was sure of, or confident that he knew.

Pilate is the biblical example of "epistemological uncertainty," Paul is the Biblical example of "epistemological certainty." I think I'll stick with Paul.

Comments

[Jeremy Pierce]

Believe it or not, saying truth corresponds to reality isn't as trivial as you might have thought. The dominant philosophical view today denies that and sees a correspondence view of truth as archaic and needlessly complex. Truth for them is simply saying that a sentence S is true just in case S (e.g. The sentence 'God is good' is true if and only if God is good). Anything additional about correspondence is excess baggage. I think that argument is silly, because even putting it that way involves a correspondence between the sentence and the reality that it talks about, but somehow they don't see that.

Your description of Augustine better fits Descartes, who rested an entire epistemology on that one point. Augustine did mention something like that almost in passing, but he didn't rest anything on it. His main epistemology is based in a God who revealed himself through scripture and in Jesus Christ.

[Jeff Price]

One of the most comforting aspects of Christ is the promise of truth. He does not hide it from any of us, but plainly speaks it daily through the Holy Spirit; just as plainly as he spoke it during his earthly mission. After searching for 22 years for “truth”, I gladly accept Paul’s certainties over Pilate’s turmoil.

I lived a life spent searching and seeking comfort in truth everywhere, but where it plainly was, “But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.” (John 8:45) I could find no comfort in the perception of being the god over my own universe and living a life wrought with question after question that had no answer. When one “denies the ability to attain certainty of knowledge”, then one is promised that life of relativism and constant searching for truth with no answer to the endless stream of questions that resonate in his or her conscience.

I prefer the promise, I believe in the promise; I give my life over to that promise of everlasting life. “Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6) And I thank God for removing that skeptic from my heart and lighting my path to the teaching of Jesus Christ.

[David]

Jeremy - I was kind of hoping you might way in on this with your philosophical background. My comments about Augustine were based on some lectures from Ron Nash on philosophy at RTS. He said that Augustine at one time was a skeptic, or near skeptic and that this "I doubt therefore I am," thing became a turning point for him. I don't think that Nash was contending that he based his faith on that formula, just that it was the thing that got him out of skepticism and on the road that eventually led to his conversion. Nash also taught that Descartes borrowed his "I think therefore I am" statement from Augustine. Can you confirm or deny any of that.
I'll acknowledge my ignorance here and let you know that I didn't quite follow what you said about the dominant philosophical view of truth.
My comments were a reaction to what I perceive as the postmodernists allergy to the idea of a transcendant truth. In merely saying that truth corresponds to reality it begs the question of who defines what is real, and once you define what is real and what is true, does it have any content to it?
Any more thoughts you would care to share would be welcomed.

[Alex]

Augustine's epistemology centers around a notion of "divine illumination" wherein God reveals to the soul truth and truths.

Descartes, though he was accused of plagiarizing Augustine (and though sometimes I'm struck by the similiarities in their thoughts, for instance with regards to theodicy), did not dwell too much on this idea of divine illumination. The litmus test for knowledge was "clear and distinct perception." From a foundation of clear and distinct perceptions, one could then build up an edifice of knowledge. This is what Notre Dame's Alvin Plantinga calls "classical foundationalism."

Postmodernism, in a certain sense, is beneficial because it so vehemently attacks the notion of classical foundationalism. Postmodernism, in a sense, is the realization that man, starting from his own innate ideas (like Descartes did) cannot get very far; in fact, he will know nothing but despair.

Which is why the Augustinian assertion that divine illumination is sufficient for knowledge differs from the Cartesian assertion that an individual's clear and distinct perception is sufficient for knowledge. Augustine started with God and His gracious gift of illumination. Descartes started with man. We still suffer due to Descartes' arrogance.

[David]

Alex - thanks for jumping in. Just today I read an article from the Sep/Oct edition of Viewpoint magazine, published by John Armstrong and Reformation and Revival Ministries. In that, he describes his own "changing of the mind" on the issue of foundationalism. He defines foundationalism as follows:

The foundation on which classical foundationalism is built is “either a set of unquestioned beliefs or certain first principles” which form the basis, or
foundation, for all other knowledge.

Is this at odds with Plantinga? It looks like Plantinga's definition of foundationalism locates the "foundation" in one's own perception, whereas Armstrong locates it in principles which are outside of man.

Either way, if postmodernism were merely a critique of Descartes view as you have described it, I don't think I would have that much of a problem with it. If memory serves me correctly, isn't Descartes thought foundational to rationalism? If this is correct then the church has almost always been against rationalism.

If we were to look at classical foundationalism as defined by Armstrong and compare it to Descartes' foundationalism and then compare them all to Augustine, it seems to me that we have three different types of foundationalism.

The Armstrong definition says the foundation is "first principles."

The Cartesian definition seems to say that the foundation is "perception."

Augustine's foundation is divine illumination, or would I be wrong in saying that his foundation is revelation.

If Armstrong and the postmodernists want to reject the Cartesian form of foundationalism I'm all for it, I don't think that Christians want rationalism for a foundation.

But it seems to me that they are also rejecting Augustine's foundationalism, which is divine illumination or revelation.

That's why I really can't see any benefits in postmodernism. It lumps friends of the faith (Augustinian reliance on illumination/ revelation) in with an enemy of the faith (Cartesian rationalism) and discards both.

[Alex]

I guess someone could retort that Augustine's epistemology does not give anyone any test for whether or not what he has received in terms of "knowledge" is actually as a result of "divine illumination."

This was actually Locke's point in his Essay on Human Understanding. Locke in fact said that any divine revelation was to be believed immediately. His question concerned how one knew something was divine revelation or not. Within the context of his time, with outbreaks of "religious enthusiasm" everywhere, his skepticism is not surprising. Heck, even Paul tells us to "test everything; hold onto the good," while John enjoins us to "test the spirits."

So the problem with Augustinian epistemology is that people get duped into thinking what they believe is the result of divine illumination.

[Jeremy Pierce]

We have no evidence that Descartes borrowed from Augustine. My professor, an expert on Augustine, thinks Descartes arrived at it independently. She also thinks it wasn't central to Augustine's epistemology but just an ad hoc response before getting into his real arguments.

The stuff about contemporary views of truth was just to point out that even correspondence is controversial. You were making it sound as if that's the barebones that everyone believes.

Foundationalism is a thesis about the structure of knowledge. The most fundamental beliefs are ones that we don't have to prove because they're self-evident or have some other privileged epistemic status. Then other beliefs are built up out of that structure so that everything is ultimately grounded at the bottom level. Its primary rival is coherentism, which says that what makes a structure of beliefs a system of knowledge is that it is merely coherent. It hangs together. Lawrence Bonjour was the primary contemporary defender of coherentism, but he realized that all the arguments he had once thought favored that view were fallacious and is now a foundationalist.

Plantinga himself is a foundationalist, but he described classical foundationalism as a sub-view, one that assumes your basis will consist entirely of things that you can know through a priori reasoning or from evidence. Plantinga himself disagrees. He argues that we can know things simply because God has built us a certain way, such that when God interacts with us to give us knowledge we do in fact know, since the source is as reliable as can be. Sense perception is less reliable than God, but it's reliable nonetheless, and so we know that we have hands. This isn't a priori reasoning from principles we all know, and it isn't based on evidence. It's simply a gift of God in giving us reliable processes by which we come to know things, including to know God. This is what the Bible calls faith, which is a form of knowledge, despite the popular misconception that it's some sort of anti-knowledge. It's not too hard to see why Plantinga's view is called Reformed Epistemology.