RO delivers a death blow to Correspondence Theory of Truth
With the advent of postmodernism (hyper-modernism?) evangelical theolgians and philosophers have been scrambling to defend Biblical Christianity against the evils of postmodern theory. One of the most important grounds is the theory of truth. As read by evangelicals like Douglas Groothius, postmodernists like Rorty and Derrida demand that truth be relativized in a way that is repugnant to orthodox Christians. To defend against the relativism of postmodernity (note: I don't think "postmoderns" are demanding a totaly relativity, I think evangelicals are not up on their reading enough to undertand what Derrida and Rorty are saying - nod to Charles here) Groothius and others resort back to the vaunted Correspondence Theory of Truth (CTT), the saviour of all metaphysics and meaning. But is it?
Interestingly enough, RO claims that CTT is nothing but dressed up Modernism in its highest extent, which of course is nothing other than nihilism. Are they serious? Well, what are the claims of CTT?
"Truth is located in this [mirroring of the world] correspondence.
Insofar as these things simply "are" in the world, and thus accessible and ready
to hand for any finite perceiver, it is possible for anyone to apprehend
properly the truth of the world" (Smith, 159).
Working under the RO thesis, does anyone see what is wrong with this picture? That's right, CTT is nothing more than a robust for of "univocity" of being, the Scotus idea that we can seperate being from the Triune Being, where all meaning is derived. According to RO, there is nothing that is autonomous from the Triune God, therefore there is nothing to apprehend properly as correspondence. Without God we are literally left with nothing. How does RO destroy CTT? Through Thomas Aquinas, of course.
"Correspondence or adequation for Aquinas is not a matter of mirroring
things in the world or passively registering them on an epistemological level,
in a way that leaves the things untouched. Rather; adequating is an event
which realizes or fulfills the being of things known, just as much as it
fulfills truth in the knower's mind" (Truth in Aquinas, 5).
"For Aquinas, there is a sense in which truth resides in things:
'Truth is a property of things" such that 'a thing is true if it fulfills itself
and holds itself together according to its character and goal" (Smith,
159).
Again, RO makes the claim that there is no world independent of God with which to correspond to and that things are nothing in and of themselves, they only have substance and existence "gifted" by the Creator. Corresponding to the world means corresponding to nothingness, so according to RO, CTT does not yield truth, but rather gives nothingness. "Truth, therefore, resides in things insofar as things participate in God (Smith, 159)."
RO also uses its thesis to rework the discussion of faith versus reason. Since all things find their meaning and grouding in participation with the Triune God, reason is not seperate from faith in the dualist sense most people are used to thinking in. RO smashes these dualisms of modernity, especially this one with Aquinas' view of nature versus grace.
"the distinction between nature and grace is not one of kind but of degree,
in particular, the degree of intensity of participation in the divine (Smith,
160)."
Reason is not an autonomous human function as opposed to faith (spuernatural function?), they are both part of the participationist model of knowing, just different in level of intensity of knowledge. "Rather, reason is a reception of light, an operation of divine illumination (Truth in Aquinas, 11)." Nothing is autonomous for RO, even reason as the ground of existence in Descartes. Reason and faith are different parts of relating to divine illumination, one being the forerunner or less sophisticated version of the other. The important thing for RO is to recognize that reason and faith are not opposites, but rather different levels along the same chain of knowing: the divine illumination of the participating mind of man with the Triune God.
Once again RO takes no prisoners in its thorough assualt on modernity and hyper-modernity. RO demands that we see ontology as participationist with the Triune God through illumination and revelation, not casting reason aside (as can be found in Karl Barth) but rather seeing reason as a part of the knowledge given us by our intimate participation with the Creator and Sustainer God: the God who demands to be called Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same breath.
posted by Hans-Georg Gadamer @ 8:28 pm
5 comments
5 Comments:
I'm worried about the practical implications of this part of RO. It seems too...abstract, too religious. Let me explain.
My problem with Modernism is that it's obsession with correspondance theory leads to the realization that it's better to believe what's real/true than what's not real/false. Practically, this translates to a bunch of people who sit around and reason with each other about this and that, trying to convince each other. This doesn't translate well for Christians in a world full of people who aren't interested in systemitizing and logically defending their every belief or moral idea. It does a great job of getting us to the moon, however.
I enjoy Post-modernism melded to Pragmatism and NOT relativism because it allows us to keep a strong reliance on correspondance theory, logic and reason, in our day to day living. It lets me go on using all of the wonderful scientific advancements of the enlightenment and not descend into total relativism while at the same time approaching religion and spirituality a little less rigidly. I understand that people have different stories and experiences and that these have a profound and vast influence on their religious beliefs, and that no amount of reasoning will change that.
This isn't dividing my world into sacred/secular spheres and approaching each differently or applying notions of truth to faith I won't to the rest of the world. I still believe in an absolute in regards to faith, and still believe that the system of beliefs that more directly corresponds to the way God really is is "better." It's just a matter of emphasis. Being better or more-right doesn't matter when it comes to religious discussions quite often (sometimes it does, but not usually, in my experience.) It absolutely does matter when we're trying to get to invent a car.
I'm worried that this aspect of RO has similar practical applications to the pre-modern notions that it harkens from. I'm worried people taking this philosophy into their daily lives will mistake the call to meld faith and reason and instead supplant reason with faith. The simple fact of the matter is that Newton's laws govern the motion of moderately sized bodies completly regardless of our belief in God, our faith. There may be no reality apart from God, but I think to assert that there is no ability to perceive the universe apart from a known and blatant understanding of God is foolish.
Another quick physics analogy: When we supplant one theory with another, and the first theory's equations have worked just fine for some set of parameters, in order for the second theory to be accepted as truth it must be shown that under the same parameters the equations of the first theory can be derived from the second. The best and most obvious example of this is relativity; where Einstein fulfilled Newtonian physics in showing that his theory was bigger and better but derived the same conclusions in similar situations. If we're going to replace the correspondance theory of truth and modernism with Radical Orthodoxy, I think it needs to be shown that the areas of modernism which "work", such as CTT in reference to science, the same can be derived from Radical Orthodoxy.
I'm absolutely up for doing a doctoral thesis on this with you, Hans, but you're going to have to first continue to convince me that RO isn't just a re-hashing of pre-modern religion in post-modern language that covers over everything modernism's had to offer.
The Hurtman - I think you raises some good concerns with the practical implications of RO. I will leave the comment about people misinterpreting faith and reason and making faith supersede reason. Just because people misinterpret RO doesn't mean RO is wrong, it just means the people don't understand it. I can't attack Roman Catholicism for worshiping Mary if it doesn't say anything about it, I need to attack the people who don't know Roman Catholicism.
Pragamtism is a major concern for Americans I think, so your point is very valid. Let me put forth a few questions and see what happens. I think underlying your discussion of "religious knowledge" versus "scientific knowledge" still has a tinge of modernist duality, and you seem to be saying that religious knowledge is not as certain as scientific knowledge. If I understand that correctly, my question is how did you come to this conclusion? How do you know that scientific knowledge is more sure that religious knowledge? I think the answer is because you are still thinking (and we all are still thinking) in autonomous reason terms. Let me explain.
RO says that revelation is the key to all knowledge and we should order our understanding around it. I think we all implicitly accept this, but your comments seem to say that religious knowledge is not as sure footed than "what science says", which is not grounded in anything other than secular reason. But we have to concede that secular reason is not the way we should think as Christians. For us there is only one way of knowing for certain, that is through revelation. Everything else is subject to it and must be taking into account.
Example: we hail the power of science and its perfect discription of the world, but honestly, do you believe everything your doctor says? I mean, how many different opinions have you recieved on your back? If science is so sure and pragmatic, how is it that no one seems certain what is wrong with my hips? I think the same goes for physics. Newtonian model is darn useful, but it is not correct. Right now General Relativity is really good, but it would be absolute buffonery to declare it as truth. Its quarrels with Quantum are the perfect example.
But that is a side track from your comment really. How to make RO pracitcal in daily life is not something I have fully developed or understood yet. I don't think it entails a throwing out of the rational though. RO just does a better job of grounding the rational and giving it a telos or direction that makes more sense to us. Does that mean we do science by reading the Bible? Not entirely, revelation is not just Holy Scripture (here is is total revelation though), it is also found through the right orientation towards a gifted creation. We don't stop doing physics with RO, we just do it with a different base, a different objective. Einstein wasn't trying to make physics work better when he came up with GR, he was trying to "know God's thoughts." Our physics well be the same or better, but it will be involved in the Christian story, as opposed to the nihilistic story of modernity.
I don't know if that was a helpful clarification. How science is done with RO is still in the works, so this is a new area of research. We should be open and discerning like you are, but if the rest of the project makes sense (which to this point it seems to) then it will have excellent insights into science as well. What these are need a good working, I admit that.
The Rederest - I think I want to revise my comment a bit. I don't think I gave any positive information in the last post. My argument was more along the lines of "RO is great on epistomology, so it must be great on science as well." Not sure if that is the best way to look at it.
I think the question for RO and science is "is the scientific method part of RO's thesis?" If we can answer this in the affirmative than we are good to go. To be a part of RO thesis, the scientific method needs to make claims that are not founded on autonomous reason. I would like to argue that in its purest sense, the scientific method is not an autonomous reasonable effort, but rather the outworking of a participatory ontology, remembering that SM came from Christian and Thomist communities in the late middle ages. Were they corrupted by Scotus' idea of univocity in forming SM? I don't think so, it seems Bacon was implicitly working with a revealing idea of creation. But this needs further work. I do not think that SM is outside RO, so we can still use it, with some more powerful epistomological grounding thanks to RO. Again, more work needed.
What would this more powerful science look like with RO? Well, since all knowledge must somehow be informed by revelation (Holy Scripture and "the rule of faith"), any conclusions or interpretations given through our scientific exploration of creation would be illuminated (not constrained - cf. Barth) by said revelation. Example: When looking at modern physics, we must always ask the question "How could this be illuminated by revelation?" or "How does this conclusion help tell the Christian story." This is interesting territory but notice it is not proof texting (Bible says, therefore) but rather illumination. We don't deny our findings, we just need to see how they fit into the Christian story of the Triune God. Tough going in some things (what do quarks have to say about redemption?) and easy to make ridiculous statments (the Holy Spirit is mediated by gravitons?), but I think science needs to do its part in telling the Biblical story of the Creator God and His creation being redeemed through Jesus Christ.
I know it sounds like I'm splitting my knowledge in twain, but I don't think I am any more than we have to. I'd argue that a certain amount of duality is inherent and implicit in what we call "revelation." I understand the term in our context to mean anything that's been revealed by God to man through any means, and so I can claim to be free of modernism's duality. But how is truth revealed? In science, "truth", or our workable approximations of it, is revealed through our dilligent work in theorization and experimentation. In religion, truth is most noteably revealed through studying the scriptures, which is quite different from the scientific method.
Science isn't perfect, but unless I'm to throw out the entire notion of religious truth as it's been understood for centuries (and I'd love to, believe me) I don't think you can assert that it's "more true". There are far more religions, even sects of Christianity, "differing opinions" as you called them, then there are theories about the way our universe works. Your example about my back and your hips seems to say that you think because science hasn't worked perfectly in all cases, it's not a real means to truth. I'd assert that all accepted forms of revelatory knowledge suffer just as much, if not more so, from differing and useless opinions.
I guess my question is, how is science to be "revealed" by God, and how is it any different or better than the CTT? I understand now why RO can do away with CTT, but I don't understand why we as scientists think that's good, or how it will be useful. I think it's likely to cause a whole hoarde of idiots to justify their ignorance about the world by saying revelation is more important than science, since viewing science as a revelation seems so difficult to me.
are you ever going to post anything else on this blog? Ever?
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