Article

Does contemporary theology require a postfoundationalist way of knowing?

The latest issue of SJT includes an essay by a good mate of mine – Kevin Diller. The article, which offers a response to Shults’ call for a postfoundational epistemological approach, seeks to answer the question, ‘Does contemporary theology require a postfoundationalist way of knowing?’ Here’s the blurb:

In his The Postfoundationalist Task of Theology, F. LeRon Shults recommends postfoundationalism as a via media between modernist foundationalism and postmodernist antifoundationalism. He advocates postfoundationalism as an epistemological approach which avoids the pitfalls on either side and provides the best way forward for constructive theological work. In this article I attempt to assess how well Shults’s proposal treats Christian theological knowing. I begin by entertaining a Barthian theological concern which might be employed as soft criteria for an assessment of any proposed theological epistemology. This concern stipulates that an epistemology in the service of Christian theology must respect a commitment to the objective reality of God who, as Word become flesh, makes himself known through the human experience of reality to his church, while recognising the fallibility of human knowing, presupposing a knowledge of God accessible through experience always only by the prevenient, self-giving action of God. I then turn to a brief analysis of the Shults–van Huyssteen case against foundationalism and nonfoundationalism, focusing particularly on the postfoundationalist critiques of foundationalism and fideism in dialogue with Barth. The article concludes with an appraisal of the postfoundationalist recommendation. I argue that Shults’s approach maps well to the theological concern for critical realism and a recognition of the social embeddedness of human knowing. Postfoundationalism’s underlying commitments, however, leave it closed to an external source of warrant, and as a consequence repudiate a from above view of theological knowing. I suggest instead that only a theofoundationalist epistemology avoids the pitfalls sketched by Shults in a way that maintains proper epistemic humility without entering the ghettos of fideism or scepticism.

Creational Ethics Is Public Ethics

The Journal for Christian Theological Research has just published an article by Guenther “Gene” Haas, ‘Creational Ethics is Public Ethics‘. The paper presents the framework and key doctrines relevant to public moral engagement as found in the Reformed or neo-Calvinist tradition shaped by Abraham Kuyper and his disciples. Haas’ thesis is that Christian ethics is public ethics because it is creational ethics. Christian ethics has a place in the public arena because it is the articulation of the creational moral order that constitutes and guides all human beings. Neo-Calvinism considers the creation order as foundational. The fall of creation and its redemption must be understood in relation to this foundational doctrine. But the creational order also shapes the nature of Christian involvement in the public domain. The final section highlights some implications of this for involvement in public life.

More Forsyth online

Paul Moser over at Idolaters Anonymous has just done one of the most beautiful things a human being can do: post some more Forsyth articles on his site. Thanks Paul. He tells me that he plans to add some more of Forsyth’s (lesser known) books soon, so keep a look out for that. His latest uploads are: