how do we know things…more on postmodernism

April 13, 2007 in Uncategorized

So I’m slowly grasping some things about postmodern philosophy. A few quick observations:

Reading about it in class firsthand has helped, because I have previously read it through filters. What I mean is, reading Christian authors applying it to theology is secondhand, like Bryan McLaren, Rob Bell, and Ron Sider. So going to “the source” has been helpful to really understand. Its actually less scary that way!

So the question that we are working through is, ‘how do we know things?’ Philosophers call this “epistemology”, I think from the greek work ‘pistis’ which means ‘faith, belief’. As I touched on in the last entry, since the enlightenment and Descartes, modern epistemology has been understood as a building. Our knowledge must rest on firm ‘foundations’, then we build up from there. But when we start finding things that seem to contradict the foundations, what happens? Do we doubt the foundation? That is the problem with the modern way of knowing, like a foundation and a building.

Do you think this way? Can you relate to the problem of thinking this way? I think I can: Consider the problem of evil and human suffering. Obviously followers of Christ believe that God is good – a foundation. We build on that with God created us, originally as ‘good’ also. But as Adam and Eve fell, we fall. Thus all kinds of evil is ushered into the world. This inevitably causes me to question the foundation of my beliefs, that God is good. So all kinds of theories are devised to explain why my foundation still works, like the notion of ‘free will’…but that calls into question if God is really sovereign. So I’m trying to see if all these conflicts seem so conflicting because of the way knowledge is conceived, as a building with a foundation.

So what does Postmodern philosophy offer as an alternative? Instead of thinking about knowledge as a building, that requires a solid foundation to build upon, a WEB is proposed (I think this is where Rob Bell gets his trampoline analogy in Velvet Elvis). So the web is anchored by experiences we have had. For Christians it will also be anchored by Scripture, and the history of the Church. Beliefs are formed from them, and beliefs are connected within the web. However, the further our beliefs are from experience (or scripture, and history) the further in on the web they are.

So my question is, is this really a better model for how we actually think and know things? That is something postmodern philosophy is proposing, and it may or may not have any usefulness in theology. But it may. Besides I may have botched the whole description.