Of Umpires and Postmodernism
Posted
Sunday, January 21, 2007
by
Charlie Trimm
Categories:
Culture and Theology
My mom is taking a few seminary classes and recently I was helping her study for a test for a theology class. In one of her textbooks (Survival Guide to Theology ), I came across a very helpful way to illustrate the difference between modernism and postmodernism. This topic is an important one today for all areas of life, including theology, and being able to illustrate the difference helps us understand the difference.
The illustration has to do with three umpires. The first one says "There are balls and strikes and I call them as they are."This reflects the modernist view. There is absolute truth, and we can know with certainty. The way the ump sees the ball is always an accurate reflection of its true state and there is no possible way that the call differs from reality. This also reflects hard foundationalism, which builds everything on several hard foundations. These foundations can be known with certainty. This is the Enlightenment view and a Scottish common sense model which is reflected in most of evangelical thinking. It is perhaps exemplified by the work of John MacArthur. According to him, we can know absoute truth with certainty. It is characterized by fine nuancing in theology as well as a high level of dogmatism about a variety of issues.
The second umpire says "There are balls and strikes, and I call em as I see em." This reflects a critical realist. There is a connection between reality and the way that we view it, but our perception might be off sometimes. There is absolute truth, but that does not mean that our knowledge of that truth is perfect. This also could reflect soft foundationalism, which recognizes that we can never know a foundation for certain like a hard foundationalist thinks they can. But we can know something with a high level of probability, so we can act as if we are hard foundationalists. But we do this with a greater deal of humility and a willingness to go back and reexamine our views periodically. This view seems to reign in the evangelical academy and the younger evangelicals.
The third one says "There are balls and strikes, and they aint nothing till I call them." This reflects radical postmodernism. There is no absolute truth. Truth does not exist until I make something truth. It doesn't matter where the ball actually went, it only matters whether I call it a ball or a strike.
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