In critiquing D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, James K. A. Smith makes a wonderful point. Smith says that Carson interprets the mentionings of “truth” and “knowledge” in the Bible as clear evidence that the Bible “also advocates the modern epistemological notion of objectivity.” Smith then goes on to argue that the Scriptures “give us good reasons to reject the very notion of objectivity, while at the same time affirming the reality of truth and knowledge.” In other words, Smith is arguing that on theological and philosophical grounds that the presumed connection that Carson makes between “truth” and “knowledge” in the Bible and in the present just doesn’t hold up.
I would add that the presumed connection that Carson makes is, on empirical grounds, dubious as well. While there are surely aspects of continuity between ancient ways of understanding “truth” and “knowledge,” such as Platonic dualism, there are also very great and historically demonstrateable differences between, say, the modern correspondence theory of truth and anything Jesus or his disciples ever possibly could have understood about “truth” and “knowledge.” To suggest that the “truth” and “knowledge” mentioned in the Bible are what pass for “truth” and “knowledge” today, as if there was an unbroken and a-historical line between then and now, is to ignore historical, theological and philosophical grounds to think otherwise.
This conundrum creates a problem for the more reflexive faithful. One strategy is to locate Biblical words such as “truth” and “knowledge” in there original historical and textual contexts. This is the strategy of the literary theorists, or the narrative theologian, and their strategy is to tie the text back to the event and weave together a coherent storyline. But there is a second strategy that gets much less air time at OST and in books, blogs and media sources more generally. This second strategy is more of the anthropological game. The aim is to put words like “truth” and “knowledge” into their present contexts, which is to say that we emphasize the enactment of “truth” and “knowledge” today. The focus here is on the incarnational performance of the Spirit through you, or making one‘s body into a living parable of Jesus‘ words. Do you see the difference? In ideal-typical terms, this diagram may show the reflexively faithful response to the ongoing collapse of metaphysical foundations.
(Common Text)
Holy Bible
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Literary Theorist Anthropologist
(Past Events) (Present Enactment)
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