The Epistemological Divide

There are many theories about the root of the divisions in the church at this particular moment. Not that any of these disagreements are new or particularly heated when looking over the scope of history. Some point to presenting issues like sexuality in church leadership. Others point to the theology that underlies the debates, such as differences over Biblical authority or ecclesiology and the exercise of power.

I find increasingly that a key division comes down to epistemology. The division comes down to differences in what we think we can know and how we think we can come to know it. On one side, you have those who believe that we can have certain knowledge, based on a combination of reason and divine revelation. This view is rooted in the philosophies of modernism and the enlightenment. On the other side, you have those who think that human certainty is folly and that our beliefs are always contingent, limited, and shaped by our social location. This view is expressed in postmodern philosophies. Sometimes, this division is cast in terms of belief in absolutes versus a view that truth is contextual. In fact, its not so much about the nature of truth as it is our ability to perceive it.

Disputes over the authority of Scripture are one of the primary arenas in which this battle gets played out. When conservatives argue that the Bible is inerrant or infallible, they are actually making several epistemological claims about humanity that are difficult to justify. For the Bible to be meaningfully infallible, it must:
a) in its writing be completely uncorrupted by human sinfulness, ie, the writers wrote exactly what God told them to write, nothing more or less, leaving no human fingerprint on the text;
b) the Biblical witness must be without contradiction, because a contradiction would negate infallibility;
c) the transmission of the text must also have been uncorrupted;
d) human beings are able to perceive and understand the infallible truth which Scripture represents.

Even if one were to grant a-c, the argument fails with d. Human depravity rears its ugly head yet again.

That is ultimately why I believe that the liberal/postmodern (not necessarily the same thing) position is more faithful to both Scripture (which never claims to be infallible) and the Reformed tradition. This is also why so often conservatives will speak with certainty while liberals and postmoderns hesitate to do so. In our debates within the church, all of us would do well to remember that no matter how fervently we believe something and how certain we think our knowledge is, since we are sinners, we could in fact be wrong.