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The Possibility of Theology · Reformed Thinking

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Hello, and welcome to another session of Reformed Thinking.
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We are really glad you're here with us.
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Yeah. Good to be here.
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Today we have a massive topic on the table, a really big one.
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We're cracking open Christian Theology by Millard J Erickson,
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and we're zooming in on a chapter that, on the surface,
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sounds a little dry. Does the title is the
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possibility of theology? Right.
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Sounds academic. But it's asking what is maybe
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the most high stakes question a believer can ask in the 21st
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century. That's it exactly.
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The question isn't just, you know, what do we believe?
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It's actually step before that. It's can we believe anything at
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all? Can we say something is true
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anymore? Yes, we're living in this world
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that has shifted, I mean violently shifted from what we
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call modernism to postmodernism. And so the central problem we're
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wrestling with is this is doing theology.
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And let's define that as, you know, the study of God, the
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study of doctrine. Is that even possible anymore?
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Or have we just completely lost the ability to claim that
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anything is objectively true? And that's where we have to
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plant our flag right at the beginning of this.
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As we go through Erickson's work here, we're doing it from a very
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distinct vantage point. Right, we're not neutral
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observers. Not at all.
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We are holding to a Reformed perspective.
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We stand with the Westminster Confession of Faith.
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We start from the position that God has spoken, that His Word is
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truth, and that truth actually corresponds to reality.
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Yeah, our words about God can actually connect with the way
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God is. Right.
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We're not just floating in a sea of opinions here.
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We believe there is a bottom to the ocean.
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There's a foundation. Precisely.
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And Ericsson is going to help us defend that cognitive, that
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doctrinal ground. But to do that, you have to
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understand the ground you're standing on.
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You have to understand the battlefield.
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So here's our road map for this deep dive.
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First, we're going to unpack that massive shift from the
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modern era to the postmodern era.
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We really need to get a feel for how the world used to think and
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how it thinks now. Then we'll look at doctrine
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itself. What even is it?
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Is doctrine just a feeling we have?
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Is it a nice story? Or is it a statement of fact,
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something that's either true or false?
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Then we have to tackle the really tricky problem of
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perspectivism. You know, the idea that because
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we're all biased, we can't really know anything for sure.
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We're going to look at how to reclaim a correspondence view of
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truth. That idea that our words
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actually match reality. And finally, we'll wrap up by
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looking at Ericsson's 3 levels of theological activity.
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How do we move from just, you know, sitting in the Pew and
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believing to actually thinking theologically?
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It's a full agenda. It is a lot to get through.
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OK, let's dive in. Let's unpack this.
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We have to start with the context.
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Ericsson talks about the modern period.
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When we say that, we're talking roughly the 18th century all the
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way through the late 20th century.
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And that's a key point. When people hear modernism, they
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think current. That's not what it means in
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philosophy. It means a specific era that's
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actually, for the most part, behind us.
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So what? Defined this time.
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What was modernism all about? Modernism was defined by a a
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massive vote of confidence in human rationality.
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There's this huge prevailing belief that the universe is
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rational, it's ordered, and the human mind is capable of
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understanding it. With certainty.
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With certainty, that's the keyword.
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It was a really optimistic time for the human brain.
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I like that. Optimistic for the brain, yeah.
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But there was a big shift in how they explain things.
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If you look at the pre modern era, you know, I think the
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Middle Ages, the Reformation, people explained events by
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looking outside of nature. They look to God.
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To God or to Plato's forms or some higher reality.
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But the moderns, they started looking inside nature for the
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explanations. So instead of saying God caused
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this for a divine purpose, they started to say, well, social
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realities 'cause this or biological functions 'cause
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this. Exactly.
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They move from what Aristotle called final causes, the
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ultimate purpose of a thing, to efficient causes, just the
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mechanics of how it works, the how instead of the why.
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And Ericsson points to three key figures who really built the
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House of modernism. The usual suspects, I'm
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guessing. Let's start with Rene Descartes.
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The father of it all, Descartes, was a mathematician, and that
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tells you everything you need to know about him.
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He wanted proof. He wanted philosophy to be as
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certain as math. You know, 2 + 2 is always four.
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He wanted that level of absolute, unshakable certainty
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about existence, about God, about everything.
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So what did he do? He doubted everything.
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Universal doubt. He tried to find the one single
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thing he couldn't possibly doubt, which he decided was his
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own thinking. I think therefore I am.
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And this is what we call classical foundationalism.
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Yes, it's this idea that you have to find an indubitable 100%
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certain foundation and then you build all your other knowledge
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brick by brick on top of that one certain thing.
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Which sounds great in theory, until you realize how very, very
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little you can actually be 100% mathematically certain of.
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Right. Creates a lot of intellectual
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anxiety, actually. OK, so then after Descartes you
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have Immanuel Kant. We just cannot talk about the
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modern world without talking about Kant.
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He introduced something called a mouthful epistemological
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dualism. OK, that is a mouthful.
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What does that mean for us? For the person in the Pew.
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It means he split the world in two.
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He drew a line. On one side you have what he
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called pure reason. That's the world of science,
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history, math, things you can sense and measure the facts
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world. On the other side of the line,
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you have practical reason, and that's where he put morality,
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religion, God. Kant said that because we can't
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see or touch or measure God with our five senses, God cannot be
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an object of theoretical knowledge.
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Wow, so God gets kicked out of the classroom and sent over to
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the Chapel. He's not a fact anymore.
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That's a perfect way to put it. God becomes a practical
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necessity for morality. I mean, we need Him so people
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will behave themselves, but he's not something you can know in
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the same way you know about gravity.
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This is where that split between faith and fact, which we feel so
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strongly today, really takes root.
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It's the source code for that split.
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And then, of course, you have the scientists.
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You have Bacon and Newton. Right, the rise of the
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scientific method. Empirical observation became the
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gold standard for truth. And you know what?
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Honestly, it worked. Erickson makes the point that
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science vindicated itself through technology.
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It's hard to argue with penicillin.
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It is or with airplanes or the Internet.
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Science delivered the goods. It made life better in tangible
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ways. But that success led to a very
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specific mindset, a certain way of looking at the world.
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It did, and Erickson references a book by John Herman Randall,
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Making of the Modern Mind, which lists 10 characteristics of this
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modern mindset. And if we walk through these, I
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think you, the listener, will recognize the water we've all
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been swimming in for the for the last 300.
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Years. OK, let's run through them.
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Number one is humanism. Simple enough.
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Humans are the center of the story.
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Reality exists for us. We control nature.
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We determine our own history. It's all about US. #2
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Naturalism. This is that shift from the
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heavenly to the earthly reality is restricted to the observable
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material universe. If you can't see it or tested in
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a lab, it probably isn't real. No room for the supernatural. #3
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is huge the scientific method. It's not just a way of knowing.
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For the modernist, it becomes the only valid way of
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investigating truth. If science can't prove it, it's
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not knowledge, it's just opinion. #4 Nature is dynamic.
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Yeah, this means nature isn't just a passive stage where God
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acts. Nature itself is the 'cause it
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explains itself. You don't need God to explain a
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thunderstorm. You have meteorology.
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Right #5 Determinism. This is the belief in
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unbreakable laws. If we can just figure out the
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laws of nature, of physics, of psychology, we can predict
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everything and control everything.
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It's a very mechanical view of the universe.
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Number six is 1. We see everywhere today
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reductionism. Oh, this one is massive.
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This is the nothing but fallacy. Psychology is nothing but
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biology. Biology is nothing but
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chemistry. Chemistry is nothing but
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physics. You reduce everything down to
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its smallest component parts and you completely lose the meaning
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of the whole. A human being is nothing but a
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collection of chemicals. Scary stuff #7 foundationalism.
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Which we talked about with Descartes.
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It's that quest to ground all knowledge on absolutely sure,
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100% certain first principles, OK?
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#8 Metaphysical realism. Now, this one is actually quite
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healthy, and it's something we'd want to hold onto.
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It's simply the belief that objects exist independently of
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our minds. You know the tree in the forest
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is really there whether you're looking at it or not.
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That seems like common sense. It is, but we'll see how
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postmodernism messes with that. OK #9 representative language.
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Also, common sense words refer to real things out there in the
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world. When I say the word dog, I'm
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talking about a real 4 legged furry animal, not just a concept
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floating around in my head. And finally #10 the
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correspondence theory of truth. Which is the big one.
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For our purposes, a statement is true if and only if it matches
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reality. It corresponds to the way things
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actually are. Now, when you put all ten of
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those together, you get a worldview that thinks it can
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explain, well, everything. That is the absolute hallmark of
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modernism. It produced these massive
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all-encompassing Omni explanatory systems.
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Think about Darwinism. It's a theory that tried to
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explain all of life. Or Freudianism.
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Right. Freudianism tried to explain all
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of human behavior through sex and repression or Marxism.
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It tried to explain all of human history through economics and
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class struggle. They were basically secular
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religions. That's exactly what they were.
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They offered a total diagnosis of the human problem and a total
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cure for the human problem with no God required.
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So in this environment, where was theology?
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What were Christians doing while all this was happening?
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Well. For the most part, it was on the
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defensive. In the early 20th century, a lot
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of Christian theology tried to fight on modernist turf.
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You had Christian apologetics trying to prove God with the
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same kind of scientific rigor as a lab experiment.
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Trying to beat science at its own game.
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Pretty much. Or you had people like Karl
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Henry, who Ericsson notes was actually way ahead of his time
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on this. Henry started challenging the
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supposed objectivity of science itself.
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He was saying, hey, wait a minute, you scientists have your
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own unproven assumptions, your own faith commitments too.
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Which is a very postmodern thing to say, actually.
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It is. He was seeing the cracks in the
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foundation of modernism before most people did.
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And that brings us to the shift. Because modernism, for all its
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confidence, didn't last forever. That shiny promise that science
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and reason would solve all human problems?
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It started to tarnish. It really did.
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After two world wars, the Holocaust, the nuclear bomb, the
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optimism started to fade and we moved into what we now call
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postmodernism. So if modernism was all about
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certainty in grand systems. Postmodernism is the denial of
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those systems. It's the collapse of the belief
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that we can have one big story that explains everything for
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everyone. OK, so how do we spot
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postmodernism in the wild? What are its key themes?
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First and foremost, the big one is the conditioned nature of
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knowledge. A modernist thinks I am an
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objective observer. I see things as they really are.
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A God's eye view. Sort of, yeah.
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A postmodernist comes along and says, no, you don't.
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You see things through the filter of your culture, your
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geography, your gender, your race, your language.
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All knowledge is filtered. All knowledge is perspectival.
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So for them, objectivity is just an illusion, a myth.
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It's a myth, and usually a myth used by people in power to keep
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their power. And that of course changes where
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meaning lives. In the old days, meaning was in
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the text. The author wrote something, so
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the author determined the meaning.
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The author's intent was king. Exactly.
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Post modernism shifts the locus of meaning from the author to
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the reader. It's all about interpretation.
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It's about what the text means to you.
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Your experience of the text is what matters.
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This is where we get that phrase, the rejection of meta
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narratives. Right.
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Jean Francois Leotard is the key name there.
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He famously defined postmodernism as incredulity
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toward meta narratives. A meta narrative being.
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A big, all inclusive story. A grand narrative that claims to
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explain everything. Like Marxism, or frankly, like
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Christianity, postmodernists are deeply skeptical of these big
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stories. Why?
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Well, two reasons. First, because they're created
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by finite, biased human beings, so how can they be universally
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true? And second, because historically
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these big stories, these met narratives, have been used to
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justify oppression and violence. So they don't just distrust the
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big stories, they actually distrust reason itself.
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To a large extent, yes. They tend to view truth not as a
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discovery of reality, but as a product of power.
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Whoever gets to define what is true in a society has power over
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everyone else. Truth is a social construct.
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So instead of propositions and facts.
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They prefer stories, narratives, They prefer my experience and my
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truth over objective facts. There's a deep suspicion of
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anything that claims to be a universal propositional truth
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claim. And they completely reject
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foundationalism. Oh completely.
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The idea that you can have a solid unquestionable bedrock of
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truth to build on. They see that as Descartes pipe
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dream. Instead, they prefer other
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models like Coherentism, which just asks, do my beliefs hang
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together in a consistent web? Or pragmatism.
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Which asks, does this belief work for me?
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Does it help me achieve my goals?
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The focus is on utility, not on correspondence to reality.
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It definitely sounds a lot less optimistic than modernism.
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It is, It's much more cynical or maybe just realistic depending
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on your view. Modernism thought knowledge
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would save us. Postmodernism looks at the 20th
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century, the wars, the genocides, the environmental
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destruction, and realizes that very smart people with a lot of
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knowledge can do absolutely terrible things.
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Knowledge doesn't solve the human heart problem.
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OK, so that's the landscape we've moved from.
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I can know everything for sure with my own reason to I can't
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really know anything for sure except my own perspective.
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Now we have to critique this, because while postmodernism make
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some good points, Ericsson argues it has some absolutely
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fatal flaws. And we have to be fair.
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We have to give credit where it's due.
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Postmodernism is right about perspectivalism.
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We are affected by our time and place.
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We're not neutral, objective robots.
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We have biases. And they were right to critique
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scientism, that arrogant idea that science is the only way to
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know truth. Absolutely.
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Those are valid and helpful critiques.
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But the whole system eats itself.
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It is fundamentally self refuting.
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Let's talk about the deconstruction paradox.
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This is where it gets really interesting.
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Right, so deconstruction is the method used by postmodern
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thinkers to take apart a text and show that it has no single
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stable, fixed meaning. It's all just a free play of
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words. But as thinkers like James Sire
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have pointed out, if no text is privileged and no ideology has
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any real grounding in reality, then deconstruction itself is
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ungrounded. If you make the statement all
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truth is relative, you're presenting that statement as an
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absolute truth. You can't stand on a cloud and
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say there is no ground. You fall right through your own
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statement saws off the branch you're sitting on.
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Ericsson tells a great story about shop Derrida, who's
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basically the father of deconstruction, and the
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philosopher John Searle. This is a classic academic burn.
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It's fantastic. So Derrida wrote a very dense
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deconstructionist article. John Searle wrote a reply
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criticizing it, basically saying it was nonsense.
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OK, Derrida then wrote a massive 93 page reply to Searle, and the
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whole tone of it was essentially complaining that Searle
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misunderstood him. He was furious that Searle had
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ignored his authorial intent. Wait a minute, isn't Derrida the
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guy who famously says authorial intent doesn't matter and the
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reader creates the meaning? That is the beautiful irony of
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it. When he is the author, suddenly
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he wants his words to be understood correctly.
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He wants his sentences to have a fixed stable, meaning that
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Searle is obligated to respect. It just shows that you cannot
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not actually live as a consistent postmodernist.
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You can't. You expect people to understand
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your emails. You expect the pharmacist to
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read the doctor's prescription correctly and not just, you
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know, interpret it freely. It's a fundamental logic
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problem. It is.
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You cannot escape logic. Some postmodern thinkers will
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say things like, oh, we don't use that oppressive Western
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logic, but to even argue against standard logic, you have to use
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standard logic. How so?
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If you say standard logic is wrong, you are using the law of
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non contradiction. You are implying that it cannot
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be both right and wrong at the same time.
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You have to assume the very rules you're trying to throw out
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just to make your case. Ericsson brings up the T-shirt
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Paradox, which is a fun way to see this.
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I love this visual. Imagine AT shirt on the front it
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says the statement on the back of this shirt is false.
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OK. And you turn the shirt around
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and on the back it says the statement on the front of this
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shirt is true. My brain just hurts thinking
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about that. It's a.
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Paradox. It creates an endless absurd
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loop. If the front is true, the back
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is false, which makes the front false, which makes the back
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true, and on and on forever. That is what happens when you
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abandon objective logic. The human mind simply cannot
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function that way. And the theological danger here
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is just massive. If we accept this postmodern
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view, we end up in pure subjectivism.
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Right. If knowledge is relative, then
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truth becomes relative. And if truth is relative, then
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the gospel is just one more story on the shelf.
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It's no better or truer than any other myth or religion.
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It's just your truth. Which is a complete betrayal of
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what the Bible claims for itself.
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A total betrayal. So as Reformed believers, we
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have to reject that, and to do that we have to be really clear
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about what doctrine actually is. Erickson helpfully lists 5
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different proposals for the nature of doctrine.
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Let's run through these because this really helps us see where
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all the confusion in the church lies today.
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The first view, and the one we'll be defending, is that
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doctrine is a conveyor of truth. Erickson calls this the
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cognitive view. Cognitive meaning it has to do
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with knowledge. Exactly.
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This is the historic classical view.
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Doctrines are statements. They are propositions that are
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either true or false. The statement God created the
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world is a statement about reality.
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We're claiming it's true. OK, that's the one we're rooting
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for, but one of the alternatives that have become popular.
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Well, you have Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of
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liberal theology. He viewed doctrine as the
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interpretation of experience. So it's not about facts, it's
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about feelings. Pretty much.
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Schleiermacher said that the essence of religion isn't about
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knowing things or doing things, it's about feeling.
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Specifically what he called the feeling of absolute dependence
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on God. So for him, doctrines aren't
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facts about God, they're just are human reflections on our
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religious feelings. So the creed is just poetry
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about my spiritual journey. That's a good way to put it.
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Then you have the practical action view.
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This comes from Albert ritual and more recently from
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Liberation theology. And was their take.
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They say the doctrine is basically a reflection on
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praxis, which is a fancy word for action.
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It's all about social justice or the plight of the oppressed.
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For them, the primary question is, is this doctrine true?
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But does this doctrine lead to the liberation of the poor?
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The focus is on the result, the action.
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Right, Truth is defined by its social utility.
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Then there's a more modern 1, the linguistic rules view.
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This is associated with a guy named George Lindbeck.
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OK, what does he argue? This is what's called the post
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Liberal view. Lindbeck says doctrines are like
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grammar rules for a language. They don't tell you what is true
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about the universe out there. They just tell the Christian
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community how to speak about God properly.
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So it's like the rules of baseball.
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Exactly like the rules of baseball.
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The rules tell you how to play the game correctly, but they
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don't describe the physics of the universe.
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They only have meaning inside the game.
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So the doctrine of the Trinity isn't a statement about ultimate
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reality, it's just the grammatical rule for how
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Christians should talk. That's the idea.
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And finally #5 is the narrative view from James McClendon.
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He argues that doctrine is the ongoing story of God's working
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in the world. A story that includes the Bible.
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But also includes all of church history and even what's
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happening in our lives right now.
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It's one big unfolding story, and doctrine is just our way of
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telling that story. OK, so Erickson lays out all
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five of those options and he concludes, and as reformed
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thinkers, we strongly agree that the cognitive view, the conveyor
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of truth view has to be the primary one.
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Why is that? Because without the cognitive
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framework, without objective propositional truth, all the
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other views collapse into meaninglessness.
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OK, unpack that. Take experience.
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If doctrine is just reflecting on our religious experience, how
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do you judge between experiences?
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Why is a Christian's experience of God any more valid than a
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Buddhist experience of Nirvana or a New Ager's experience of
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the cosmic consciousness? You can't.
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They're all just feeling. Right.
21:18
You need a doctrinal framework, a set of truth claims, to even
21:21
make sense of the experience and to judge whether it's from God
21:24
or not. OK, what about the practical
21:26
action view? Practice must follow doctrine.
21:29
Erickson uses Philippians 2. It's perfect example, Paul tells
21:32
the church at Philippi to be humble and to serve one another.
21:35
Why? What's the basis for that
21:36
command? It's because Jesus, who was God,
21:39
humbled himself and became a servant.
21:41
Exactly. The action be humble is based on
21:44
the doctrinal fact the incarnation.
21:46
If the incarnation isn't a real historical objective fact, then
21:50
the command to be humble loses all its power.
21:53
It's just a nice suggestion. And the rules view the grammar
21:56
of faith. Rules need grounding.
21:58
Why should I follow the grammatical rules of the
22:00
Christian community and not the rules of the local Rotary Club
22:03
or the rules of Islam? Unless the Christian rules are
22:07
based on reality, on the God who is actually there and has
22:10
revealed himself, they're just arbitrary.
22:13
It's just a game we've made-up. So the Reform stance is crystal
22:16
clear here. Doctrine certainly effects our
22:18
experience, and it absolutely drives our practice, and it
22:21
shapes the story we tell. But primarily, first and
22:24
foremost, it is a set of true assertions about God and
22:28
reality. Yes, we are asserting that God
22:30
is real, that He has acted in history, and that we can say
22:34
true things about Him. But we still have to deal with
22:36
that very powerful postmodern critique, perspectivism.
22:40
Erickson is honest about this. He admits that everyone has a
22:43
perspective. There is no neutral standing
22:45
point. And this is really important for
22:46
our own humility. We don't claim to have the God's
22:49
eye view of everything. We are creatures, we are finite,
22:52
we are fallen. We have blind spots.
22:54
We have to own that. The problem is, as you know,
22:56
most people are great at spotting other people's blind
22:59
spots. Oh yeah, but they are terrible
23:02
at seeing their own. It's the speck and the log from
23:04
the Gospels, isn't it? It's human nature.
23:07
Erickson has a great term for one version of this
23:11
chronocentrism. Chronocentrism so centered on
23:14
our own time. Exactly.
23:15
It's the arrogance of thinking that our time, our present
23:19
moment, is uniquely superior or enlightened compared to the
23:23
past. We see this all the time.
23:25
We look back at the past and think, oh, those silly ancient
23:28
people or those superstitious medievals.
23:31
Right. You see this constantly in
23:32
theology. When people dismiss a
23:34
theological view simply by labeling it, they'll say, oh,
23:37
that's just Greek philosophy or that's a product of modernism.
23:40
The assumption is that because we are postmodern, we have
23:43
somehow evolved past those simple minded errors.
23:46
It's a chronological snobbery. It's a way of not having to
23:50
engage with the argument. It is Erickson also brings up
23:52
the sociology of Knowledge Paradox, which is a brilliant
23:55
critique of the skeptics. OK, explain that one.
23:58
So you have sociologists like Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman
24:01
who argue that all belief is determined by your social
24:05
setting. You only believe what you
24:07
believe because of where and when you were born.
24:10
Your beliefs are a social construct.
24:12
OK, but wait. You see where this is going.
24:14
Does that theory also apply to the sociologist?
24:17
Is the theory that social setting determines belief just a
24:22
product of the sociologist's own social setting in a Western
24:25
university in the 20th century? If it is, then the theory itself
24:29
isn't objectively true, it's just their socially conditioned
24:32
opinion. Exactly.
24:33
It's another case of sawing off the branch you're sitting on.
24:36
And apparently when pressed on this paradox, Berger and Luckman
24:39
basically refused to answer. They said trying to answer it
24:42
was like trying to push a bus while you're riding inside it.
24:45
That is a great image. You can't push the bus you are
24:47
sitting in, no. You can't.
24:49
So this seems like a dead end. If we're all biased and stuck
24:52
inside our own bus, how do we ever get to the truth?
24:55
Erickson proposes a way forward he calls post perspectivism.
24:59
Yeah. And the goal here is not to deny
25:01
that we're conditioned. That's impossible.
25:04
The goal is to reduce the conditioning.
25:06
We want to try and approximate objectivity, even if we can
25:09
never perfectly achieve it, and Ericsson gives us some really
25:12
practical tools for how to do this.
25:14
OK, what's the first one? First, he suggests writing an
25:17
intellectual autobiography. That's an interesting exercise.
25:21
It's a great exercise for anyone.
25:23
Sit down and write out your own background.
25:25
Where are you from? Who are your teachers?
25:28
What church did you grow up in? What are your personal traumas
25:31
and triumphs? The goal is to identify your own
25:34
biases to make them conscious instead of unconscious.
25:38
It's like calibrating a scientific instrument before you
25:40
use it. You have to know it's quirks.
25:42
Or it's like the hunter analogy Erickson uses.
25:45
A good hunter knows the wind is blowing from left to right, so
25:48
he doesn't aim directly at the duck.
25:50
He aims a little to the left of the duck, where he knows the
25:53
duck will be when the bullet gets there.
25:55
He compensates for the wind. We have to learn to compensate
25:58
for the wind of our own cultural and personal bias.
26:02
OK, that's a great picture. What's the second tool?
26:04
Interaction. You have to intentionally talk
26:07
to and read people who are not like you.
26:10
Get outside your echo chamber. Desperately and specifically for
26:14
curing chronocentrism, you need to read people from other
26:17
centuries. CS Lewis was huge on this.
26:21
If you only read books written in the last 10 years, you share
26:23
all the same blind spots as the authors.
26:26
But if you read someone from the 4th century or the 16th century,
26:29
they had completely different blind spots, so they can see
26:31
yours clearly. That's so good.
26:34
OK. And the third tool.
26:35
Playing the devil's advocate with yourself, Erickson mentions
26:39
that Milton Friedman had this advice.
26:41
You cannot be sure that you are right about something unless you
26:45
know the arguments against your view better than your opponents
26:48
do. Wow, that's a high bar.
26:50
It's a very high bar, but we need to be rigorous in
26:53
challenging our own assumptions and really trying to understand
26:56
the best arguments from the other side.
26:58
This all leads us back to the nature of truth itself.
27:01
We mentioned the correspondence theory earlier.
27:03
Ericsson calls this the primitive, or just the same view
27:06
of truth. Because it's the view everyone,
27:09
including postmodernists, uses in their real life every single
27:13
day. If I say the cat is on the mat,
27:15
that statement is true if and only if there's an actual cat on
27:19
an actual mat. The words correspond to reality.
27:22
But postmodernism plays with two other theories, coherence and
27:26
pragmatism. Right.
27:27
The coherence theory says a statement is true if it fits
27:30
together consistently with all your other statements.
27:32
But a novel can be coherent. A lie can be perfectly coherent.
27:36
The entire world of Harry Potter is coherent.
27:38
All the rules fit together. That doesn't make it historical
27:41
fact. Coherence is necessary for
27:43
truth, but it's not sufficient. And then there's pragmatism, the
27:46
idea that a statement is true if it works.
27:49
And this is probably the most dangerous and seductive one for
27:51
the church today, because we love things that work, We love
27:54
strategies that grow the church. But Ericsson gives a devastating
27:57
real world example of why pragmatism is a terrible test
28:00
for truth. The 2008 housing bubble.
28:03
Oh, this is a classic. Think about the mid 2000s.
28:07
A huge number of people, bankers, homeowners, investors
28:12
all believe that housing prices would always go up.
28:15
That was their truth. And for a few years that belief
28:18
worked spectacularly. People got rich, they bought
28:21
houses with no money down. Pragmatically, from a doesn't
28:25
work perspective, it was true for a while, for a while, but in
28:29
reality it was objectively, catastrophically false.
28:33
And when reality finally asserted itself in 2007, 2008,
28:37
the crash was disastrous for the entire world.
28:40
So short term success or what works in the moment is not a
28:43
reliable guide to what is actually true.
28:45
Not at all. Just because a particular
28:47
ministry strategy works to fill seats in a church doesn't mean
28:50
the doctrine behind it is true. We had to insist on a
28:52
correspondence view of truth, OK.
28:54
Now let's talk about foundations.
28:56
We said earlier that the postmoderns rightly reject
28:58
classical foundationalism, that Cartesian quest for 100% math
29:02
like certainty. But Ericsson doesn't throw the
29:04
baby out with the bathwater. He proposes what he calls neo
29:07
foundational or soft foundationalism.
29:10
And this is the kind of nuance we desperately need in these
29:12
conversations. We don't need to be Renee
29:14
Descartes doubting our own existence to build up our world
29:17
view. That's a dead end.
29:19
But we do need basic beliefs. We do need a foundation.
29:23
A starting. Point a starting point for the
29:25
Christian, those basic beliefs are things like the reliability
29:29
of our sensory perception. I can generally trust what my
29:32
eyes see and most importantly, the truth and authority of
29:36
Scripture. So we claim that Scripture is
29:39
our true and reliable foundation, but we don't
29:42
necessarily claim that we have absolute God like philosophical
29:45
certainty about every single deduction we make from it.
29:48
That's it. It's a humble foundationalism.
29:50
We avoid that infinite epistemic regress where you have to prove
29:54
the proof of the proof of the proof forever.
29:56
At some point you have to stop and say God has spoken.
29:58
This is my foundation I'm building here.
30:00
It's a faith commitment, but a reasonable one.
30:02
Exactly. And to build on that foundation,
30:05
we also need common logic. Right.
30:08
We can't do theology without logic.
30:10
Erickson is very firm on this. The whole idea of an alternative
30:13
logic is just absurd. You cannot communicate, you
30:16
can't make sense of God's revelation in the Bible without
30:20
using the basic laws of logic like the law of non
30:23
contradiction. Theology requires logic to be
30:25
coherent. OK, so we've established that
30:29
truth exists, the doctrine is cognitive, it's about truth
30:33
claims, and that we can know it imperfectly as biased people.
30:37
But truly, Erickson wraps up this whole chapter by describing
30:40
3 different levels of theological activity.
30:43
He borrows this model from a philosopher named Bernard Mayo.
30:46
And this is super helpful for you, the listener, to kind of
30:49
find where you fit in the life of the church.
30:51
So Level 1 is the practicing believer.
30:54
Ericsson uses the analogy of a piano player.
30:57
The piano player just plays. They might not be consciously
30:59
thinking about music theory or the mechanics of finger
31:02
placement. They've internalized it.
31:03
They're just making music. This is the everyday believer
31:06
who is living out their faith. Their doctrine is embedded in
31:08
their life. Implicitly, they're typing
31:11
without looking at the keys. OK, that makes sense.
31:13
Then there's level 2. The teacher, this is.
31:16
The piano teacher this is. Where you have to step back and
31:19
reflect consciously on what you're doing.
31:21
This is the Sunday school teacher, the small group leader,
31:24
the pastor, the parent explaining the Bible of their
31:26
kids. You're consciously thinking
31:28
about doctrine. You're trying to understand how
31:31
different beliefs relate to one another so you can explain it to
31:34
someone else. And finally, Level 3, the
31:37
theologian. Erickson calls this the music
31:40
theorist or the composer. These are the academic
31:43
theoreticians. They're thinking about the deep
31:45
Why questions the criterion methods of theology itself.
31:48
They're asking the abstract questions about structure and
31:52
logic and history that we've been talking about in this deep
31:54
dive. And the key to a healthy church,
31:57
Erickson says, is the connection between these 3 levels.
32:00
Absolutely. The theoretician, the theologian
32:03
in the seminary, must also be a believer, a piano player.
32:06
If the theologian stops praying and worshipping and being part
32:09
of the local church, they end up in the ivory tower, completely
32:13
disconnected from the real life of God's people.
32:16
Their work becomes sterile. But there's also a danger for
32:18
the practitioner, for the piano player.
32:21
A huge danger. The danger of neglecting
32:23
reflection. Just focusing on what works.
32:26
Yes, we see this all the time in what you could call mega church
32:29
pragmatism. If you are only focused on
32:32
playing the piano, on getting things done, running programs,
32:36
getting people in the door, you might neglect the long term hard
32:40
work of reflection on what you are actually teaching and why
32:43
you need the theorist and the teacher to keep the player
32:46
playing the right song. So theology is the specific
32:49
vital activity of the Church. It's the process of moving us
32:53
from an implicit, unreflective faith to an explicit, robust
32:57
understanding. And that is why it is possible.
32:59
It's possible because God has revealed build himself in a way
33:02
we can understand. He's given us minds capable of
33:05
grasping that revelation. And He has put us in a
33:08
community, the church, to help check our biases and sharpen our
33:11
understanding together. So to recap this whole
33:13
discussion, we have to move beyond the failed modernist
33:17
obsession with scientific proof for everything, but we
33:20
absolutely refuse to fall into the self refuting postmodern
33:24
trap that says nothing is true or everything is relative.
33:28
We acknowledge our bias, our perspectivism, but we don't
33:32
surrender to it. We don't just throw up our
33:34
hands. We use the tools God has given
33:36
us, scripture, logic, and the community of Saints throughout
33:39
history to get closer and closer to the objective truth of who
33:42
God is and what He has done. And as Reformed thinkers, we
33:46
stand on the Westminster Confessions reliance on the
33:48
objective truth of Scripture. That is the necessary
33:51
foundation. Without it, we're all just
33:52
trying to push the bus from the inside.
33:54
Amen to that. All right, here is a provocative
33:56
thought to leave you with today. We talked a lot about
33:59
chronocentrism, the unique blindness and arrogance of our
34:02
own time. So if you admit honestly that
34:05
your own view of the world is auditioned by your 21st century
34:09
culture, what is 1 specific step you are taking today to
34:12
intentionally listen to a voice from another century?
34:15
That's the challenge. Don't just read another blog
34:18
post. Go pick up Augustine's
34:20
Confessions, read Calvin's Institutes, read Athanasius,
34:24
read someone who doesn't Share your modern blind spots and let
34:27
them challenge you. That's it for this deep dive
34:30
into Erickson's The Possibility of Theology.
34:32
Thanks for listening to Reformed.
34:34
Thinking. Keep thinking.