Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism by Douglas R. Groothuis

Author:Douglas R. Groothuis [Groothuis, Douglas R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780830822287
Amazon: 0830822283
Barnesnoble: 0830822283
Goodreads: 2854
Publisher: IVP Books
Published: 2000-04-29T20:00:00+00:00

Newbigin's Uncertain Truth

Lesslie Newbigin (d. 1998) was a long-time missionary and Christian statesman who, later in life, wrote several books addressing the question of how Christians should face postmodern times. He has much to say of value concerning the nature of the Christian life and commitment in our day. Although his critique of non-Christian worldviews and attitudes was often insightful, his concept of truth and its defense were unsteady at times. The consistent application of his ideas leads to a diminishing of apologetic effort, and this is ill advised for the challenges we face. In some ways this thinking was postmodernist.

First, Newbigin's view of truth appears to be inconsistent. At times he sounds as if he endorses the correspondence view, while at others he seems to deny it. Newbigin emphasizes that the gospel is a "public truth," a reality to proclaim and live out before the world. He says that we have to proclaim the gospel "not as a package of estimable values, but as the truth about what is the case, about what every human being and every society will have to reckon with."47 He also makes this admirable statement:

I am responsible for seeking as far as possible to insure that my beliefs are true, that I am-however fumblingly-grasping reality and therefore grasping that which is real and true for all human beings and which will reveal its truth through further discoveries as I continue to seek 48

This agrees with the view of truth I have presented. I also applaud this statement: "When I say 'I believe' [in Christianity] I am not merely describing an inward feeling or experience; I am affirming what I believe to be true, and therefore what is true for everyone."49 Statements such as these were enough to make Philip Kenneson claim that "the proposals of Lesslie Newbigin [are] never quite satisfying."" Yet Newbigin also makes statements that may be taken to deny-and to misrepresent-the correspondence view of truth. When discussing the notion that "belief-statements are merely subjective," he says that this

presupposes the possibility of an "objective" knowledge which is not knowledge as believed to be true by someone. This bogus objectivity is expressed in Bertrand Russell's definition of truth as the correspondence between a person's beliefs and the actual facts. This definition is futile since there is no way of knowing what the actual facts are except by the activity of knowing subjects. The definition implies a standpoint outside of the real human situation of knowing subjects-and no such standpoint is available.51

As I argued in chapter four, Russell distinguishes objective reality from true belief (or knowledge of objective reality), which corresponds to that reality. Of course, there is no way of knowing the facts except as they are known by knowing subjects. To know is precisely to know the objective facts as a knowing subject. Newbigin sounds quite postmodern in denying that there is a standpoint outside the human situation (what Kenneson refers to as "the view from nowhere") that would somehow be necessary for Russell's view of truth to hold.

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