1. A Missionary Encounter with Western Culture: Revelation, Scripture, and (especially) Epistemology
Michael Goheen

2. Uncovering the Hidden Credo
Incomparably the most urgent missionary task for the next few decades is the mission to ‘modernity’ It calls for the use of sharp intellectual tools, to probe behind the unquestioned assumptions of modernity and uncover the hidden credo which supports them At the most basic level there is need for critical examination from a Christian standpoint of the reigning assumptions in epistemology (How do we know what we claim to know?) and in history (How do we understand the story of which we are a part?)
- Lesslie Newbigin

3. Telling Our Cultural Story
“Telling a story to understand our culture is indispensable To get straight where we are, we have to go back and tell the story properly. Our past is sedimented in our present, and we are doomed to misidentify ourselves, as long as we can’t do justice to where we came from. That is why the narrative is not an optional extra, why I believe that I have to tell a story here.” (Charles Taylor, A Secular Age)

4. Roots of Rationalistic Humanism in Greco-Roman Culture
Emerged in pre-Socratic philosophers over against pagan religion of Greek culture
Culminated in Plato and Aristotle
Spread throughout ancient culture by Alexander the Great
Embraced by Roman empire

5. Seeds of Western Worldview
Rationalism: Human reason alone is capable of understanding world
Naturalism: World can be explained by natural causes
Humanism: Autonomy of human beings from any transcendent authority

7. Plato ( B.C.)
Aristotle ( B.C.)

8. Plato Fear of relativism, skepticism, uncertainty of Sophists
Search for absolute, transcendent truth
Posits realm where such ideas existed
Dualistic cosmology, epistemology, anthropology

9. Platonic worldview (4th c. B.C.)

10. Aristotle
Follows Plato in search for unchanging ideas that stand above history as source of truth (philosophical, social)
Disagrees in how to discover those ideas
Rejects spiritual realm
Ideas found through empirical-logical analysis
Forges set of tools for theoretical analysis used throughout Western history

11. Theory-Practice Dichotomy
faith
economic
social
cultural
political
rational
emotional
body
praxis
theoria

12. Theory-Practice Dualism
This dualism is “a function of Aristotelian paganism, which made a god out of theory or analysis” Aristotle “like many Greek philosophers before and after him, singled out one aspect of created reality, the reasoning function, and gave it the absolute status of God. Having fallen into this idolatry of the rational, all the rest of human functions and activities are lumped together and are downgraded in comparison to it, and are mindlessly labeled the ‘practical.’” The very category of practical “in its value laden opposition to ‘theoretical’ is a pseudo-concept deriving directly from Greek philosophical idolatry.” (Al Wolters)

13. Larger Worldview of Plato and Aristotle
Forged epistemology out of concern for transcendent truth
Socio-political world
Ethical life
Autonomous reason: A tool employed by human beings for betterment of world

14. Roots of Rationalistic Humanism in Mediaeval Synthesis

16. Two Storeys of Thomas Aquinas
Spiritual realm GRACE Supernatural
Soul Church Christian life
Faith Revelation Theology
___________________________________________________
Material realm NATURE Natural
Body Society Cultural life
Empirical reason Natural law Science/Philosophy

17. Tension of Thomas’ Two Storeys
The Christian mediaeval synthesis presented by Thomas is one of extreme tension, and in the dynamic of historical development had effects which were to prove self-destructive: there was to be an unprecedented and all-embracing movement of secularization and emancipation at the lower level.
- Hans Küng

18. Synthesis Opens Door to Rationalism and Naturalism
Without the Thomistic synthesis, it is questionable whether the force of Greek rationalism and naturalism could have been so fully assimilated into a culture as pervasively Christian as the medieval West.
- Richard Tarnas

19. Fading of Top Storey or Nature Eats up Grace
Spiritual realm GRACE Supernatural
Soul Church Christian life
Faith Revelation Theology
___________________________________________________
Material realm NATURE Natural
Body Society Cultural life
Empirical reason Natural law Science/Philosophy

20. Hinge into modern world
The 15th century Renaissance was a hinge into the modern world as it broke the Mediaeval shackles of tradition, religion and superstition with the hammer of a humanism forged in Greece and Rome.
- Philip Sampson

21. Autonomy: Three Compass Points of Modern World
Non-human creation: Becomes ‘nature’– made independent of God’s presence and rule
Human being: Becomes ‘subject’ – human life defined apart from God’s purpose and norms
Human society: Becomes ‘culture’ – autonomous humanity’s mastery of and domination over nature to shape it according to their will and for their purposes.
- Roman Guardini, The World and the Person

22. Scientific Revolution (16th -17th c.)
Christian and humanist vision
Humanist vision to dominate nature

23. Boundless Will Toward Domination
. . . one of the beliefs that rules our scientific and technological civilization: To put the answer simply, it is the boundless will toward domination which has driven and still drives modern men and women to seize power over nature. In the competitive struggle for existence, scientific discoveries and technological inventions serve the political will to acquire, secure and extend power. Growth and progress are still gauged by the relative increase of economic, financial, and military power.
- Jürgen Moltmann

24. Descartes and Bacon Craft Modern Vision
Knowledge is power: Scientific knowledge of world enables humankind to build better world
Scientific knowledge of nature’s laws enables humanity to predict how nature would respond
This would give power to control
Nature manipulated in a quest for a secular paradise
Basis for knowledge: autonomous rational person and law-governed, mechanistic nature
Need for a new method to get scientific knowledge

25. Knowledge in Rene Descartes: Rational Method
Rigorous distinction between rational subject and object (mechanistic nature)
Intellectual self-purification or methodological doubt
Archimedean point or foundation
Method to allow reason to rise above subjectivity
Reason: Arbiter of all truth claims
Solitary, monological activity (individualistic)

26. Cartesian Objectivism

27. Methodological Reason

28. Scientific Revolution (16th - 17th c.)
Christian and humanist vision
Humanist vision to dominate nature via reason
Triumph of humanist vision—why?
Conflict with church
Religious wars

29. Opposition to Copernicus: Triumph of Humanist Vision

30. Religious Wars: Triumph of Humanist Vision

31. Central Role of Reason in Western Story
Reason: an instrument in broader humanist vision
Reason disciplined by scientific method
Explanation reduced to cause and effect relations
Growing confidence in methodological reason to come to truth
Scientific method spills beyond proper bounds into a worldview (scientism)

32. Scientism
Second [aspect of modernity], there is the gradual decay of authority...and a growing belief in the power of individual minds, guided by methods of observation, experiment and reflection, to attain the truths needed for the guidance of life. The operations and results of natural inquiry gained in prestige and power at the expense of principles dictated from high authority.
- John Dewey

33. Conversion of West (18th C.)

34. Enlightenment: The Conversion of the West to a New Faith (18th c.)
Modern worldview comes to maturity
Confessional rationalistic humanism becomes dominant religious vision or culturally formative worldview
Enlightenment faith

35. A New Faith
The West had ‘lost its faith’—and found a new one, in science and in man.
- Richard Tarnas

36. Enlightenment Humanist Faith
Faith in progress toward paradise
Propelled by reason and science
Scientific reason translated into technology
Scientific reason translated into societal organisation and structures
Progress comes ‘by the application of reason’ to both ‘technical and social’ issues (J. H. Plumb).

37. Fact-Value Dichotomy

38. Christianity and the Enlightenment Humanist Faith
Gospel: Private and otherworldly
Enlightenment story and faith narrates world for evangelical Christians
‘Evangelical love affair with Enlightenment’: A tale of two men—Warfield and Kuyper (Marsden)
Rise of term ‘worldview’ (Kuyper) and ‘presuppositional apologetics’ (Van Til)
Protect gospel as equally comprehensive story of the world

39. 20th Century Development and Our Current Situation
Postmodern challenge: Increasingly comprehensive and widespread challenge to Enlightenment faith
Survival and global spread of an economic form of the Enlightenment faith
Consumer culture—fruit of both developments

40. Failure of Idol: Scientific Reason Cannot Deliver on Promises
Poverty
Ecological issues
Nuclear threat
Economic issues
Social and psychological breakdown

41. Subjective Factors Shaping Knowledge
SOCIAL
Tradition
Community
Language
Culture
History
Faith
PERSONAL
Feelings
Imagination
Subconscious
Gender
Class
Race

42. Postmodern Social Construction

43. Current Situation Modern objectivism Postmodern relativism
“. . . critical examination from a Christian standpoint of the reigning assumptions in epistemology . . .” (Newbigin)

44. Current Situation: Where do we go from here?
It is we Christians who have failed to challenge modernity’s fundamental assumptions, who have allowed the gospel to be coopted into it instead of challenging it. It is upon us that there now rests the formidable responsibility to recover a concept of knowledge that will heal the split in our culture between science and faith, between the public world and the private. - Lesslie Newbigin

45. Living at the Crossroads
Recovering Christian epistemology
Rejection of modernity’s idolatry of scientific
method
Affirmation of scientific method as one way
of knowing God’s creation
Rejection of postmodernity’s relativism
Affirmation of postmodernity’s recognition of
broader context of knowledge
Christian community working in light of the
gospel
Antithesis and common grace

46. An Epistemological Model

47. A Christian Understanding of Western Epistemology

48. A Christian View of Knowledge

49. Importance for Theological Education
Epistemology will undergird the way we understand our theological task
Epistemology will undergird the way we understand the apologetics task