Postmodern Approaches to Knowledge: Finding a Starting Place for Faith and Learning after Foundationalism

Clark Triplett, Ph.D.
Dean of Graduate Studies and External Compliance
Professor of Psychology and Human Services
Missouri Baptist University

The integration of faith and learning is an activity in which Christians, in particular, attempt to relate the language of faith and theology to the multiple languages of the various scholarly disciplines. The how of this process is the subject of much discussion and debate. The major problem with this endeavor is the grand assumption that there is a lingua franca or common language that makes it possible to incorporate methods and assumptions outside each discipline's own conceptual framework. While there is certainly some sharing and overlapping in methods and assumptions between such disciplines as the natural sciences and social sciences, it is much more difficult to find common ground between theology and the other disciplines. While Christians may believe that the common ground is quite obvious, it is certainly not the case when the perspectives are reversed. It is only obvious for Christians because they view the world from a framework already rooted in the language and practices of faith. As D. Z. Phillips indicates, borrowing from language philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, an individual does not get his picture of the world by satisfying himself of its correctness, but as result of the inherited background against which he distinguishes between true and false (66). Anyone who follows the debates between some Christians and non-Christians over the issue of creation knows that the contradiction is not between individuals who think in opposite ways but rather individuals who think in completely different ways because they view the world from different belief systems (Phillips 73).

The purpose of this discussion is to review some of the more recent attempts to develop conceptual schemas particularly since the rejection of epistemic foundationalism by many contemporary philosophers. Christian scholars have often been quite liberal in borrowing from the conceptual coffers of secular philosophy (i.e., Aristotle, Descartes, John Locke, Thomas Reid, and others), so it would seem to be of value to understand some of the new directions in philosophy. A number of these approaches provide helpful tools for articulating the relationship between faith and learning.

Evangelical Scholarship after the Loss of Foundationalism

The question is how the Christian university provides a context for intellectual honesty and free inquiry for the various academic disciplines and still maintain a frame of reference that is rooted in a particular culture, tradition, and language of faith. In other words, how does the Christian scholar provide a critical perspective while advocating a particular faith? The contemporary antagonism towards foundationalism coming from many directions such as Anglo-American philosophy (Richard Rorty, D. Z. Phillips, and Alisdair MacIntyre), philosophical hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricouer), and radical postmodernism (Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Francois Lyotard) makes it next to impossible to appeal to a universal epistemological framework. A single noetic matrix to which philosophers can ultimately appeal can no longer be sustained. As Richard Bernstein says, "we are coming to an end-the playing out-of an intellectual tradition which Richard Rorty calls the 'Lockean-Cartesian-Kantian tradition'" (Beyond 7). There is no longer an Archimedean point upon which we can ground all knowledge or some sort of neutral cognitive framework for deciding which paradigm or metatheory is best.

According to Bernstein, the locus classicus of modern foundationalism is the Meditations of Rene Descartes which portrays a meditative journey of the soul that recognizes its own finiteness in light of the infinite perfection of God (Beyond 17). For Descartes, the quest for a certainty of knowledge is really in the end a quest for the mind of God since we are made in his image. There is in Descartes, according to Edward Craig, "a gesture towards the doctrine of qualitative similarity" between God and man. Man's certainty about the truth is rooted in the fact that God is no deceiver, and so it is possible to discover completely reliable beliefs and transparent truths through a certain internal rational process (25-7).

Descartes's views are important to this discussion because since his time foundationalism has been thought by many Christians to be the only perspective "capable of doing justice to the nature of religious belief" (Phillips, Faith 3). Since the nineteenth century, conservative Protestant theologians have relied heavily on foundationalist methods to ensure the trustworthiness of the Scripture and the orthodox theological system. Using a "rationalist loci" conception, classic theologians such as Charles Hodge and, later, B. B. Warfield, attempted "to systematize the facts of the Bible and ascertain the principles or general truths which those facts involve" (Hodge quoted in Grenz and Franke 14). More recently evangelical theologian Carl F. H. Henry has used philosophical foundationalism as a critical framework for evaluating non-evangelical (liberal) theologies. Post-liberal theologians, such as Hans Frei, worry that Henry's excessive commitment to modernity places him more squarely in the camp of his archenemies, the liberals, than anything that might separate them, so that they end up being "siblings under the skin" (quoted in Hunzinger 136).

Interestingly, in recent years Reformed (Kuyperian) philosophers have been critical of "evidentialist" or "foundationalist" approaches to any noetic structure. Reformed philosophers such as Cornelius Van Til, George Mavrodes, Alvin Plantinga, and Nicholas Wolterstorff have argued that classical foundationalism, traced back as far as Aristotle, is "both false and self-referentially incoherent; it should therefore be summarily rejected" (Plantinga 17). According to Plantinga, et al, nonbelieving philosophers, such as Bertrand Russel and Anthony Flew, reject belief in God as irrational and intellectually irresponsible because there is no warrant (insufficient evidence) for it. At the core of this position is the proposition that there is "a body of theories from which all prejudice, bias, and unjustified conjecture have been eliminated" (Wolterstorff 28). This is based on a foundation of basic propositions that are certain and self-evident using methods that are equally certain. Nonbelieving foundationalist philosophers reject arguments for the existence of God because there is no warrant or evidence for such a belief. The question for the Reformed philosopher is, how does anyone know for sure that what is taken to be self-evident is really self-evident? Wolterstorff makes a strong case that since basic or foundational propositions are accepted by faith they do not follow the rules of inference (48). The foundationalist has no rational criterion for placing these basic propositions in his noetic structure. He takes it on faith that these propositions are self-evident and indubitable. Yet, as Phillips emphasizes, "it is this very commitment that he objects to in the religious believer" (17).

Recognizing that there is no final warrant for foundationalist propositions, Reformed philosophers such as Plantinga argue that there is no legitimate reason for excluding belief in God. He attempts to make the case that holding a noetic structure in which belief in God is a basic principle is not irrational or incorrigible (30). While rejecting classical foundationalism, however, Plantinga and others do opt for a broader or more modest form of foundationalism which allows for more beliefs to be counted as basic including belief in God (Clark 116). This argument is not based on some infallible certainty (ultima facie) but on prima facie obligations or evidence which can be overriden but only if there are good reasons for thinking otherwise (Plantinga 33).

The problem with Reformed approaches to epistemology, according to D. Z. Phillips, is that they are still in the grip of the foundationalism they set out to criticize (29). While philosophers like Plantinga emphasize the need to abandon foundationalism, what he ends up doing is to add to the foundations our belief in God. It may be quite clear to another believer that there is no good reason not to include belief in God, but to an unbeliever there is no good reason why one should. Plantinga certainly has made a strong case that the basic propositions of classical foundationalism have no justification. The unbeliever can use the same argument for belief in God. As Nancy Murphy argues, "Whenever one finds suitably indubitable beliefs to serve as a foundation, they will always turn out to be useless for justifying any interesting claims; beliefs that are useful for justifying other claims will always turn out not to be indubitable, and in fact will be found to be dependent upon the structure they are intending to justify" (90).

Alternative Paradigms: A Shift towards Hermeneutics

Although there is some criticism of the "soft" foundationalism of Reformed philosophy, their search for an alternative to classical epistemology has led to a more "person specific" and "situation specific" approach to knowledge so that "reason itself is a disputed topic" (Grenz and Franke 47). Much of the criticism of postmodernism concerning "metanarratives" or "grand theories" of modernity relates to the way in which ahistorical, universal approaches to knowledge lead to domination over those who do not fit within this framework. This is the position of post-structuralist Michael Foucault who criticizes universal epistomologies as simply attempts to oppress and limit those who do not agree. Unfortunately, the hyperbole and rhetoric of Foucault seems to be mostly about critique without any alternative "that informs his critique and enables his rhetoric of disruption to work" (Bernstein, New 157). The radical language of postmodern writers, however, does force us to deal with difficult questions about what we believe and reminds us of our historical "situatedness" and value-laden perspectives. For many postmodern writers this includes a radical historical finitude which is an inevitable part of every truth-claim.

The shift away from foundationalism has led to a much more varied understanding of how individuals make sense of or give meaning to the world. The hermeneutical turn to discourse about noetic structures recognizes that explanations about reality and life are inextricably bounded by culture, language, and social interactions. This is, perhaps, best understood in the work of anthropologist Clifford Geertz who recognizes the problems of analysis that field anthropologists must overcome in order to understand primitive cultures. The problem for Geertz is the ability to see alien cultures "in terms of the constructions we imagine Berbers, Jews, or Frenchmen to place upon what they live through, the formulae they use to define what happens to them" (15). This is what he describes as "thick description" which attempts to get at the first order, actor-oriented symbolic systems of other cultures. Since anthropological writings themselves are a form of interpretation, they are fictions, not something false but something made, which are second and third order constructions. According to Geertz, only a native makes first order interpretations; after all it is his culture (15). This highlights the "local" and "particular" nature of rational systems and the concern for what Thomas Kuhn and others (i.e., Paul Feyerabend and Richard Rorty) have described as the incommensurability of different paradigms. It is important to acknowledge, however, that Geertz does not despair of the ability to understand other cultures and engage in thick description; he simply recognizes that it is not possible to always make a direct comparison of the constructs of two different cultures. Rather, this distance between cultural interpretations creates a challenge to understand and compare constructs "that is met by the artful employment of hermeneutical skills" (Bernstein, Beyond 96).

The interest in hermeneutics and its application, particularly in the area of the human sciences, developed as a result of a dissatisfaction with positivistic approaches to the study of social life and its appropriateness to the study of social phenomena. At the core of this concern was the recognition of the "historical consciousness" of human beings and that human action, including thinking, is the product of a particular culture with specific values and ways of viewing things. Everything is filtered through the grid of experience. Understanding is not so much a psychological act of subjectivity as placing oneself within a social process. Knowing is a social process and there is no neutral, abstract, universal perspective from which to view reality.

Hans-Georg Gadamer is, perhaps, one of the most influential thinkers in the field of philosophical hermeneutics. Shortly before Thomas Kuhn published his work on the The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Gadamer completed his most significant book, Truth and Method, which is one of the most comprehensive and cogent discussions of the meaning of hermeneutics to date. It includes a sustained criticism of the sacred cows of the entrenched, positivistic method as it applies in particular to human experience. He is most critical of the idea that knowledge is something objective and neutral and can be freed from prejudice, bias, and tradition (Gadamer 282-3). In his book, he explores what he believes to be a completely different idea of truth which is always situated within a particular context of life. Humans interpret life from a specific historical-cultural horizon which is prejudicial. This means the way humans construe things is "governed by an expectation of meaning that follows from the context of what has gone on before" (Gadamer 291). Prejudice is a form of pre-understanding based on experience, culture and language. This does not limit knowledge or obliterate all difference or tension; rather, it recognizes that knowledge is set within a particular historical setting which is a living tradition. An awareness of pre-judgment or prejudice makes it possible to recognize the difference and not to completely assimilate the text or the discourse of the other into the present horizon. This recognition makes conscious "the prejudices governing our own understanding, so that the text, as another's meaning, can be isolated and valued on its own" (Gadamer 299). Interpretation must always take into account its own historicity.

Gadamer places hermeneutics at the very center of philosophy. He gives it both ontological and universal significance. Interpretation or understanding is not a method; it is a primary mode of being in the world. Hermeneutics is not a speculative endeavor; rather, understanding is more like a "happening" or an ontological event, a mode of experience in which truth is communicated (Thiselton, Two 293). This is why Gadamer links ontological hermeneutics to the idea that reason is primarily a practical activity. This understanding is borrowed from Aristotle whose concept phronesis, practical reasoning, is linked to ethical activity, especially the virtue of moral knowledge. According to Gadamer, interpretation always includes application. He broadens this idea in his discussion of works of art. The way an individual understands music or drama is not simply by looking at the score; understanding happens through its performance. Audiences understand a symphonic composition through the experience of the event, and the way it is performed is never exactly the same as its original intent (Gadamer 119). So understanding includes a creative event in its own right. This does not mean an abandonment of the original event because this is part of the ontological disclosure, but something new does occur within the context of the hearer. So Gadamer stresses that the hermeneutical event does not occur in subjective isolation but is part of a sensus communis; that is, it is acquired by being part of a particular community and is determined by the language and values of that culture (Thiselton, Two 295). Understanding is a conversation and "participants in a conversation 'belong' to and with each other, 'belong' to and with the subject of their communication" (Weinsheimer and Marshall xvi).

Others have followed in Gadamer's footsteps. Anglo-American philosopher Richard Rorty is also critical of naïve objective methods of positivitism as a foundation for all knowledge. Rorty believes that much of the confusion about traditional models of knowledge is based on an image of the mind as a great mirror that reflects reality. "Without the notion of the mind as a mirror, the notion of knowledge as accuracy of representation would not have suggested itself" (Rorty 12). This image of the mind has so captivated modern thinkers that no other views seemed possible. Like Gadamer, however, he argues for a much more pragmatic understanding of knowledge and takes an even more extreme turn in the direction of socio-pragmatic hermeneutics. "Rorty fastens onto, and develops one side of the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer" (Thistelton, New 394). His primary goal seems to be to rid all discussions about knowledge and truth of their metaphysical and epistemological pretensions (Rorty 5). All discussions of truth are rooted in a human life and, as a result, interpretations are radically variable. "Hermeneutics sees the relations between various discourses as those of strands in a possible conversation, a conversation which presupposes no disciplinary matrix which unties the speakers, but where the hope of agreement is never lost so long as the conversation lasts" (Rorty 318). There is no universal criterion for argumentation; no one knows this before the conversation starts. The only criterion for success is that the conversation continues (Rorty 373). Although there seems to be a fundamental relativism in Rorty's work, Richard Bernstein believes there is an underlying practical-moral vision:

Rorty is calling for a clear recognition of what constitutes our historicity and finitude and for giving up the false metaphysical and epistemological comfort of believing that these practices are grounded on something more fundamental. We must appreciate the extent to which our sense of community is threatened not only by material conditions but by the faulty epistemological doctrines that fill our heads. The moral task of the philosopher or the cultural critic is to defend the openness of human conversation against all those temptations and real threats that seek closure. And for Rorty, too, this theme is universalized, in the sense that he is concerned not only with European intellectuals' form of life but with extending conversation and dialogue to all of humanity. (Beyond 204-5)

There is no question that hermeneutics offers some possibilities for a Christian frame of knowledge. The study of hermeneutics actually began as a special approach to understanding the way to interpret biblical texts. Sociologist Max Weber was one of the first to apply these tools to understanding human interactions (Ritzer 116). Gadamer, in particular, has had a significant impact on Christian theology and the way theology is practiced in the life of the church. The emphasis on the performative nature of interpretation is an important corrective to the sometimes obscure, abstract pronouncements of traditional theology. It is a reminder that the truth of the Gospel is something that must be demonstrated and even the foundational evangelical tenant of the trustworthiness of Scripture is an empty shell if it is not faithfully lived out. The importance of praxis has been at the center of recent debates concerning the nature of theological education (Kelsey 225). A truly Christian frame of knowledge must include phronesis, which not only critically reflects on but provides opportunities to practice the Christian life of faith. As John Westerhoff stresses, Christian education is about fashioning Christians which includes practice in moral-decision making and problem solving within a communal context (267). Christian interpretation includes shared understandings and ways of life which both shape and are shaped by the life-world in which they participate.

While both Gadamer and Rorty provide an important corrective to foundationalism by emphasizing the importance of the historical, hermeneutical situation which shapes human interpretation, there are problems with the hermeneutical vision or at least with making it a universal framework. This is particularly true for Rorty who is much more relativistic than Gadamer. The vision of dialogical communities willing to engage in conversation about their differences is honorable and moral, but such a view presupposes the existence of some normative framework that will provide the "solidarities" that will make it possible for such rational debate (Bernstein, Beyond 225). It is one thing to accept that there is a plurality of truth-claims and no underlying universal framework, but it is another thing to say that all truth-claims are equally valid. As Michael Cartwright stresses, "all participants in the debate have a responsibility to offer well-reasoned arguments about their truth-claims in the various forums that exist for such argumentation" (210). Christianity is a faith with particular claims and although they have a stake in assuring that other claims are heard, a true community of inquiry cannot be formed without some normative claim with a universal intent. This seems to be the position of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas who believes that "fallibilism" or nonfoundationalism, while recognizing there is no "zero-context" for truth claims, still needs to be reflected "in the grammatical form of universal propositions" which are open to rational criticism (408-09).[1]

A Decisive Turn in the Direction of Linguistic Philosophy

Nancy Murphy suggests that the beginning of the end of modernism was in 1951 when W. V. O. Quine published his seminal article "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" which questioned the validity of the foundationalist account of knowledge (87). It is interesting to note that this was the year that Ludwig Wittgenstein, the father of common language philosophy, died. His work, which will be discussed in this section, plays a critical role in the decisive turn towards a linguistic approach to the justification of knowledge.

The value of Quine's work is in replacing the image of knowledge as belief system based on a foundation with the image of knowledge as a "web" or "net":

The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only on the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience on the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of the logical interconnections-the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system.. But the total is so underdetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole. (quoted in Murphy 88-9)

The import of this statement is that systems of belief are not warranted by some basic beliefs that undergird all the others. Although there is some difference in types of beliefs (history or atomic physics) in terms of how they relate to the empirical world (experience), the primary validity of beliefs is how they are tied together in a coherent system or web of beliefs. Empirical discoveries may necessitate readjustments of certain beliefs in relation to others within the web of knowledge, but the system as whole is not effected by any single empirical anomaly. An interpretive or explanatory framework is upheld by the way it holds together internally rather than externally.

Although Quine changed the image of how belief systems are justified, it was Ludwig Wittgenstein who changed the image of how language is used to make sense of the world. Whereas in modernity the image of language, particularly the positivistic image, was of a mirror or picture of reality, the later Wittgenstein suggested the alternative of language as a tool. What counts in the description of belief systems is the use of language. In his initial work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein's conception of language was that it served as a reference to things in the world-"that a proposition is like a picture by virtue of similar correspondence between its parts and things in the world" (Pitkin 27). The re-orientation for Wittgenstein, however, occurred as a result of understanding language in the context of human life. "The Tractatus simply failed to do full justice to the diversity of particular ways in which language is actually used by human beings" (Thiselton, Two 360). This led Wittgenstein to study how language is used in human communities: "For a large class of cases-though not for all-in which we employ the word 'meaning' it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (Philosophical 20). He goes on to explain, in one of his most famous comments, on the function of words, "Think of the tools in a tool-box: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screw-driver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws.-The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects" (Philosophical 6).

There are two key terms that Wittgenstein uses that help to explain his concept of language as an activity: language as a "language-game" and language as a "form of life." Language is used in diverse ways in particular situations or "surroundings" rather than in one common way as was emphasized in the Tractatus. He explains why he relates language to the idea of games when he writes:

Consider for example the proceedings that we call 'games'. I mean board games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?-Don't say: 'There must be something common, or they would not be called games'-but look and see whether there is anything common to all.-For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, buy similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that.. And the result of this examination is: we see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail. (Philosophical 31-2)

Language games include both speech and activity and have rules or conventions of usage. How language is used in different situations creates the context for meaning. Meaning is clear only when the overall role of language is apparent. Wittgenstein gives examples of different language games such as giving commands, making a joke, presenting a report, asking a question, greeting, and praying (Philosophical 11-12).

A form of life refers to a particular incident in which an activity of language occurs. As Wittgenstein says, "the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life" (Philosophical 11). Language is form of behavior in the midst of life; it is rooted in everyday life situations. In his discussion on pain, for instance, he writes, "The concept of pain is characterized by its particular function in our life. Pain has this position in our life; has these connexions; That is to say: we only call 'pain' what has this position, these connexions. Only surrounded by certain normal manifestations, is there such a thing as an expression of pain" (Zettel 94e).

It is important to understand that in using the concept of language-games, Wittgenstein is arguing against one approach to language such as assertions of fact emphasized by logical positivism. As Hannah Pitkin states,

Confronted with this multiplicity of language uses, we are less likely to suppose that one or two of them must be privileged cases which define the essence of language, and that the others need to be translated into these privileged cases before they can be fully understood. Referring, describing, asserting, stating, appear as just some more language games, no more exemplary than the rest. (42)

As will be discussed later, this approach to language opens up the door for understanding religious language and practices in the context of the language-game in which it is situated rather than from a privileged reductionistic perspective.

There is a strong similarity between the works of Wittgenstein and speech-act theory. Two of the most important advocates of this theory are J. L. Austin and John Searle. Following Wittgenstein's concept of varying language-games, Austin stresses that speaking is more than just a descriptive statement; it is not simply stating I am doing something, it is actually doing it. "When I say before the registrar or altar.'I do,' I am not reporting on a marriage: I am indulging in it" (Austin 6). This is what Austin calls a performative sentence in which issuing of the sentence is the performing of an action. However, this is only the leading incident within a process of action. It is also necessary that the circumstances in which the words are spoken be appropriate, and it is usually necessary that either the speaker or others perform additional actions. For instance, it is not really a gift if I say, "I give it to you," but never hand it over. This process is what Austin calls an "illocutionary act" or "speech-act." A closely related component of the illocutionary act is that it should have a certain intention. This is particularly important when giving a promise; a person must have a certain intention of keeping the promise (Austin 11). This is why certain procedures are designed, such as in weddings, so that the "person participating and so invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts, feelings, or intentions, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves" (Austin 39).

Austin also included in his category of speech-acts perlocutionary acts, "what we bring about or achieve by saying something, such as convincing, persuading, deterring, and even, say, surprising or misleading" (109). It is important, for >Austin, to distinguish between an action and its consequences, because unless a certain effect is achieved, the speech will not be successfully performed. An aspect of the work of John Searle, this distinction has significant import in understanding how language is "transformative" as well as descriptive.

John Searle widely extends Austin's framework of language-theory, opening up a whole range of issues that relate to how language may shape a state of affairs in the world. Like Austin, he stresses that the primary unit of linguistic communication is not the word or the sentence but the speech-act (Searle, Speech 16). Speech-acts are rule-governed forms of behavior; certain rules are regulative while others are constitutive. For this discussion, constitutive rules are particularly important because they create the possibility of new forms of behavior (Searle, Speech 35). For example, the rules of football do not merely regulate playing; they create the very possibility of playing such games. Most importantly, they make it possible for the hearer or reader to understand the intention of the speaker or writer, to understand the meaning of the speech-act.

The importance of these rules makes sense in the context of Searle's discussion of propositions. A proposition must be sharply distinguished from an assertion which is a special kind of commitment to the truth of a proposition. A proposition is not just an isolated descriptive statement but is always expressed in the form of a speech-act. According to Searle, the way to distinguish an assertion from other forms of propositions is by what he calls the "force indicator" (Speech 30). The force indicator shows how the proposition is to be understood or what illocutionary force the utterance is to have. These distinctions are denoted by use of the symbols F(p). So there are different force indicators for assertions, promises, requests, questions, and warnings, to name a few. These devices are identified through word order, stress, punctuation, and so-called performative verbs. A person can indicate the kind of speech-act being performed by beginning the sentence with "I apologize," "I warn," or "I state," etc. In many cases the context itself will make it clear what kind of speech-act it is (Searle, Speech 30).

In his book Expression and Meaning, Searle discusses the difference between assertions and other forms of speech-acts such as promises, directives, expressives, declarations, and commissives in terms of the "direction of fit" between the words and the world (Expression 3)[2]. Assertions attempt to match the words to the world and are efforts to empirically describe the world, while the other speech-act forms attempt to bring about something that will shape reality to fit the words. For example, in a wedding ceremony, when a couple says, "I promise to love you," they intend or purpose to shape the world to fit the promise. It is an example of "transformative-speech" in which there is the intention to mold the future to fit the promise.

It is important to point out Searle's emphasis on "extra-linguistic" factors involved in speech-acts (Expression 7). This includes not only assertions but also the other types of performative utterances. As Anthony Thiselton has pointed out, "(Searle) has classified and set in a broader frame the interpersonal and institutional backgrounds against which illocutions become operative" (New 297). Speech-acts only make sense within the practical operations of life and they must have institutional or social-cultural validity if they are to be taken seriously.

For Wittgenstein, Austin, and Searle, language-use and speech-activity is grounded in that which surrounds it, the forms of life and states of affairs that are behind or undergird the use of language. In many cases, there is an overlapping between assertions and other performatives in that even in those forms in which the direction of fit is world-to-word, there must be some reality that makes such statements legitimate or believable. Both Austin and Searle emphasize the intentionality of the speaker whose commitment or authority provide appropriate validity to the speech act. Without some understanding of what the content of the speech-act presupposes about the speaker or author, the validity of the description, promise, or command is in question.

The value of the work of these philosophers for discussions on the language of faith is inestimable. Religious belief is first and foremost a confession of faith which is part of the surround of the religious community. It does not attempt, at least initially, to assert basic propositions about the existence of God; rather, the existence of God is assumed in its whole approach to life and in its confession of faith. As Nancy Murphy suggests, "To 'state the facts' about God without an appropriate attitude toward God is surely to have failed to get the point of what one is saying. Similarly, to state the facts but to fail to live accordingly is likewise to have failed to recognize what one is saying" (120). This attitude toward God is expressed in Scripture through forms of worship that are instances of speech-acts. To offer up praise to God is the performance of an act of faith given by the religious community. It is not simply a statement about a situation but an utterance that is expressed out of a life of faith. This is not to deny the importance of certain states of affairs within the Christian community. A confession of faith quite often includes both a reference to reality as well as a promise or command that states what ought to be. Anthony Thiselton emphasizes this overlap in his discussion of the atonement:

In Searle's terminology, the language of atonement makes assertions about the finished work of Christ, in which the direction of fit is from world-to-word: the word of the cross, in this context, communicates and asserts the reality of what God has done. That it is past is part of the logic of its description as a completed work to which humankind can contribute nothing. But the language of participation is bound up with promise, commitment, declaration, and directive: it is word-to-world in that it shapes the identity of the Christian and creates the reality of the new creation. (New 303)

This decisive turn towards linguistic philosophy has opened up the possibility for the inclusion of religious language demonstrates in its own right without having to be commensurate with privileged, scientific language-game or form of life. Religious language is replete with speech-acts which include assertions, promises, and commands which are part of the ordinary language of life.

Finding a Starting Place for Relating Faith to the Larger World

The loss of foundationalism and the shift towards either hermeneutics or linguistic philosophy has led to a skepticism about whether there is any framework for truth that provides stability for discourse across disciplines or between one particular culture and another. For Christians, there is even greater concern about subjectivism or relativism they believe occurs as a result of a loss of belief in God in most modern and postmodern views of truth. When God is assigned to the wasteland, then there is no foundation for truth. Vaclav Havel, for example, expresses this concern in his evaluation of the modern human predicament:

I believe that with the loss of God, man has lost a kind of absolute and universal system of coordinates, to which he could always relate everything, chiefly himself. His world and his personality gradually began to break up into separate, incoherent fragments corresponding to different, relative coordinates.... (quoted in Gunton 71)

The question is whether, since the beginning of the Enlightenment, attempts at developing rational coordinates have opened up the conversation about God or squeezed God out of the picture altogether. There are some who believe giving up on the "grand narrative idea of a single truth" provides an even greater opportunity for a regulative ideal of truth and moral responsibility to "rise into full flight" (Bauman 6-7). What has been advanced as a universal method for discovering truth is often one particular framework used to drown out other voices including Christians. As Alisdair MacIntyre has argued so strenuously, the idea of a single, neutral academic standpoint is an illusion; knowledge is always the result of a particular, historical standpoint (151). But if this is the case, does this mean it is necessary to give up all fixed coordinates for a position that accepts all viewpoints as equally valid? Does the rejection of a universal method of discovering the truth mean that the search for truth should be abandoned?

Theologian Colin Gunton opts for a concept of truth that accepts its limits as finite and fallibly human and yet in its own way offers a conception of the universal without forcing it into a procrustean bed. What he advocates is "non-foundational foundationalism" or "fallibilist foundationalism" which accepts the notion that there are different methods for discovering truth and there are different contexts for understanding truth. Rather than closing down theological discussion because it has to fit within a particular scientific framework, it opens up the conversation and allows theology to have its say:

For theologians groaning under the oppression of demands to justify their discipline before the bar of what is supposed to be a universally valid scientific method the appeal of non-foundational foundationalism is immense. It liberates a celebration of the rights of particularity. It enables the theologian to say that theological method must be different from other methods because it shapes its approach from the distinctive content with which it has to do-just as, indeed, other disciplines shape their approaches in the light of their distinctive content. Non-foundationalism, that is to say, is a way of advocating the autonomy of distinct intellectual disciplines. Theologically it also has much to be said for it. Foundationalism appears to derive from an excessive confidence in human intellectual powers, to be too titanic an enterprise. According a place to human particularity, fallibility, and sin allows historical and cultural particularity to be friends rather than foes of a particular rationality (133).

This does not mean that Gunton accepts some form of intellectual sectarianism or fideism. Christians "cannot evade the intellectual challenge involved in the use of the word God" (Gunton, One 134). Where there are links between theology and other epistemologies, then it is necessary to critically engage questions from outside the Christian tradition.[3]

In many ways Gunton's position is similar to that of scientist, philosopher Michael Polanyi. In describing the purpose of his book Personal Knowledge, he states: "The principal purpose of this book is to achieve a frame of mind in which I may hold firmly to what I believe to be true, even though I know that it might conceivably be false" (214). He argued that no view of knowledge no matter how critical could operate outside a "fiduciary framework." A vision of the way things are is shaped by the sharing of language, cultural heritage, and a like-minded community (Polanyi 266). No matter how objective its claims, all knowledge is developed from within a believing community; and yet these are convictions with universal intent (Polanyi 311). According to Polanyi, inquiry occurs within a community where one is held to be personally responsible for his or her beliefs.

It seems evident that Polanyi recognizes the importance of the hermeneutical situation, that is, issues of cultural and historical particularity. Personal knowledge is shaped by language, culture, and community. This type of knowledge is not some abstract, distant observation but an indwelling: "When we accept a certain set of propositions and use them as our interpretive framework, we may be said to dwell in them as we do in our own body" (Polanyi 60). Personal participation in knowing is, as Gadamer emphasized, more like responding to or performing in a symphony. Knowing is a personal act of commitment and "into every act of knowing there enters a passionate contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and that this coefficient no mere imperfection but a vital component of his knowledge" (Polanyi viii).

Both Gunton and Polanyi provide a starting point for a Christian view of knowledge. They offer a non-foundationalist-in the case of Polanyi, a post-critical-framework for rationally organizing the world in all of its complexity. It is a view that accepts that rationality is based on a fiduciary framework and the discovery of truth is a personal commitment to being honest and open to God's creation. A Christian starting point recognizes that it represents a particular tradition within a specific community which is anchored in the life-world. Christians are also aware that there are other voices that operate with different language-games in the context of various settings of life and that it is responsible to critically and respectfully engage questions from outside its own framework. Wittgenstein emphasizes that although language-games are different, there are "overlapping and criss-crossing similarities" which create links between them that may allow access across boundaries (Philosophical Investigations 32). Because of a well-founded faith in a God who understands all perspectives, it is possible to be extremely open about other visions that seem alien or strange. However, as Gadamer emphasizes, it is important to understand that a person can never escape his or her own pre-understanding in order to observe the world from some position outside one's own experience or frame of reference.

Theologian Miroslav Volf believes that a Christian view of knowledge requires the development of a double vision. He takes issue with Thomas Nagel, in his book The View from Nowhere, who argues that it is possible to step outside ourselves and see things from a perspectiveless conception of reality, or what the world must be like from no point of view. Volf responds by suggesting the double vision in which "we replace the 'view from nowhere' with 'the view from there and 'from here'" (250-1). If knowledge is truly personal knowledge, as Polanyi emphasizes, it is never possible to understand another human being from a purely objective standpoint. Volf believes it is important to try to see others from both perspectives. He goes on to expand on this idea by saying that as Christians we should try to see things from everywhere. He says:

"From everywhere" is how God sees human beings, I would argue. God sees not simply from outside but also from within, not abstracting from the peculiarities of individual histories but concretely, not disinterestedly but seeking the good of all creation. God's eternal truth is panlocal.... This is why God's truth is not one among many perspectives, but the truth about each and all perspectives (251).

Volf is not trying to say that all perspectives are the same or that God accepts all perspectives as true; rather, he is concerned about how certain views of truth can easily become a way of overcoming others and protecting ourselves. Belief in God certainly encourages an honest and genuine pursuit of truth but that same belief should make us acutely aware of our limitations as humans and any claims to knowing all the truth.

Michael Cartwright makes the case that church-related colleges have the opportunity to provide a truly open conversation about the Christian faith (or any other faith), without denying the occasion for thinking reflectively about its own belief system or external, critical challenges to that system. A Christian view of the world cannot be a one-way street. Instead, the Christian institution should be "committed to the pursuit of truth conducted at the intersection of overlapping discourses" (212). This method of truth-seeking could provide an experimental model for the kind of discourse that takes seriously the pluralist climate of contemporary thought-forms and the particularity and specificity of its own tradition. This seems to be an appropriate starting place for relating the Christian faith to the world in which we are inextricably engaged.

The purpose of this discussion has been to provide a brief overview of a number of postmodern alternatives to foundationalism and to offer a prolegomenon to any serious efforts to integrate faith and learning. With the loss of a universally accepted matrix of knowledge for justifying validity claims, it has become increasingly more difficult to communicate across the boundaries of the varying disciplinary language-games. The possibility of ambiguity and misunderstanding is amplified without a common conceptual framework. This seems to be the case, for example, when one attempts to relate the language of faith to the language of science. As discussed above, the recent shift towards hermeneutics reminds us that our conversations about truth are shaped by our particular interests and are enmeshed in the cultures and traditions in which we live. Even Christian views are ineluctably entangled with the cultural categories of Western social, moral, linguistic and political traditions. This does not mean there can be no dialogue across particular contexts, but it does prompt us to consider the prejudicial nature of our intellectual inquiries, anchored in particular communities and languages. Such awareness should encourage a level of modesty and humility in our interaction with other disciplines and cultures. Strident claims to truth, whether from theologians or scientists, lose their intersubjective cash value in the process of understanding alternative claims.

While hermeneutics reminds us of the situational and cultural limits of knowledge, the decisive turn to linguistic philosophy opens up the conversation particularly concerning the legitimacy of the language of religion and faith. The emphasis on the multiplicity of uses of language within specific communities provides a framework for understanding the language of worship and morality in the context of the everyday practices of the faith community. This view of language weighs against a privileged and reductionistic usage that questions the legitimacy of the language of promise, command, and worship. The emphasis of Austin and Searle on speech-acts provides discriminating categories for determining the status of illocutionary forces as to whether a description of a state of affairs in the world is intended (explanatory) or whether a speech-acts counts as a command or promise intended to transform or project future possibilities. Searle's concept of the "direction-of-fit" between the world and words offers an important interpretive tool but also invites questions about the types of argumentation and validity claims required in conversations between various disciplines. Truth comes in many forms and multiple languages (narrative, propositional, poetic) and the ability to discern the intentions, in terms of direction-of-fit, of participants in the conversation will certainly enhance the possibility of a better understanding between disciplines.

It is the position of this writer that these new approaches to knowledge opens up the possibility of discussion across disciplines; that the relationship between faith and learning is a two-way street. But such a view requires a willingness to listen both from inside and outside a particular community of inquiry. Each discipline shapes its approach to truth in terms of its distinctive content. As Colin Gunton has emphasized, this means that Christians must accept the intellectual challenge involved in advocating their particular belief system and they must be willing to critically engage those outside the Christian tradition honestly and with appropriate humility. On the other hand, those outside the Christian perspective must be at least willing to allow Christian scholars to stake their claim without immediate dismissal. Without a recognition of what Michael Polanyi calls the "fiduciary framework" of all knowledge, there can be no conversation. There must be a genuine openness in trying to understand the world as the other views it in order for the conversation to continue. If truth is simply imposed from outside a particular tradition, then nothing will be learned. There must be a willingness to recognize differences and an attempt, as much as is possible, to understand from within the language and culture of a particular tradition in order to find common ground. Whether there is a critical framework for adjusting differences across disciplines is a question that cannot be addressed in this discussion, but there are some, such as Jurgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, and others who believe this is possible through the process of communicative action or practical discourse (Habermas, Moral 43-115).

While few questions were answered in this discussion concerning the process of the integration of faith and learning, it is hoped that Christian scholars will continue to find ways to relate the content and practice of faith to other disciplines. This is not an easy task and unfortunately some efforts have lacked integrity. Integration demands a willingness to critically engage other disciplines and accept the intense rigors of public, academic scrutiny. If God is the author of all truth, then Christians should not be frightened by this kind of engagement. It will certainly lead to a clearer understanding of the Scriptural admonition that we can only know in part (I Corinthians 13:12). As Miraslov Volf reminds us, "The belief in an all-knowing God should inspire the search for truth; the awareness of our human limitations should make us modest about the claims that we have found it, however" (243).

Endnotes

[1] Jurgen Habermas argues that writers like Richard Rorty and Michel Foucoult suffer from a form of self-referentiality. If their radical critique of truth-claims is correct, it undercuts the foundation of their own critique. Such criticisms demand at least some normative notions in order to determine what is wrong with such truth-claims (266-93).

[2] Searle provides an illustration of the differences in the direction of fit between words and the world from Elizabeth Anscombe (1957):

Suppose a man goes to the supermarket with a shopping list given him by his wife on which are written the words "beans, butter, bacon, and bread." Suppose as he goes around with his shopping cart selecting these items, he is followed by a detective who writes down everything he takes. As they emerge from the store both shopper and detective will have identical lists. But the function of the two lists will be quite different. In the case of the shopper's list, the purpose of the list is, so to speak, to get the world to match the words; the man is supposed to make his actions fit the list. In the case of the detective, the purpose of the list is to make the words match the world; the man is supposed to make the list fit the directions of the shopper. This can be further demonstrated by observing the role of "mistake" in the two cases. If the detective gets home and suddenly realizes that the man bought pork chops instead of bacon, he can simply erase the word "bacon" and write "pork chops." But if the shopper gets home and his wife points out that he has bought pork chops when he should have bought bacon he cannot correct the mistake by erasing 'bacon' from the list and writing "pork chops." (Expression 3-4)

[3] Gunton attempts to find middle-ground between an "excessive rational unification of being" and the fragmentation of the "postmodern idealizing of the particular." He argues for a view of knowledge that "eschews the expectation of certainty, universality and infallibility in favor of something more limited, open and tentative; something more appropriate to the character of (a) human being." This leads him to suggest the idea of an "open transcendental" which is a concept that "empowers a continuing and in principle unfinished exploration of the universal marks of being." The value of these concepts is found, not in their clarity or certainty, "but in their suggestiveness and potentiality for being deepened and enriched during the continuing process of thought, from a wide range of sources in human life and culture." This is an attempt to move beyond the "absolute objectivism and subjectivism (and of related realism and idealism), for the hope will be of presenting a conversation between the subjective thoughts of the mind and the structures of the world to which they would answer" (142-4).

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C. CLARK TRIPLETT is Dean of Graduate Studies & External Compliance and Professor of Psychology & Human Services at Missouri Baptist University. He earned an A.A. from Hannibal-LaGrange College, a B.A. from Southwest Baptist College, an M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary, an M.S.Ed. from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. from Saint Louis University. He also studied at Concordia Theological Seminary, Covenant Theological Seminary, the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland, and the Harvard Institute of Higher Education.