Dallas Willard on truth despite post modernism

Dallas Willard summarizes the issues of the Postmodern view of truth. He writes towards the end of this article, "The second main argument against "Real truth" rests upon the widespread assumption that consciousness (language, history, culture) transforms its objects in "touching" them, so that they are never "in themselves" what we take them to be in becoming aware of them or knowing them or introducing them into language. It is useful to call this the "Midas Touch" epistemology, because of the similarity, on this account, of consciousness/language to the mythological King Midas, who turned everything he touched to gold."
Scot Mcknight isn't alone in the EC to embrace this. He writes "theology is always context-shaped because we can't avoid it." He concludes this blog entry with, "if the Fall impacts our mind, then we are bound by our conviction that our theology should be more humble and and conversational. Put differently, our theology ought to be a generous orthodoxy."
This might be one of the forks in the road for the emergent church leader. If you believe you have revealed truth how do you display humility to the culture who fears truth claimers and simultaneously claim truth? It seems from my limited perspective that some of these leaders would rather preserve their humble public faces and willingly reconsider essential historic doctrines rather than risk losing an audience by proclaiming truth. An alternative approach is to be witnessing communities or incarnational communities, where you talk about your experience with Jesus or do what Jesus does and hope that seekers will join in and start to embrace a biblical worldview. Without truth claims in these contexts you get the experience-driven church which may have a difficult time ever staying on any course without the rudder of truth. The rejected method used only a few years ago is to say "This is true, and this is why." You know, the "ready to defend," AKA apologetic, method.

Perhaps ECers have tired of orthodoxy without love, but the answer isn't love without orthdoxy. Is orthodoxy an attainable goal for a postmodern ECer? Even non-ECers recognize with James that "faith without works is dead," but do ECers see works without faith are also dead? You need to know who you have your faith in. Otherwise why not be LDS or JW.

BTW, see the A-Team' s entry on the contrast of the LDS Jesus and the Biblical Jesus.

Now, no one likes to have the slippery slope argument thrown at them. But history is not kind to those churches who aren't so sure about boundaries of the kingdom of God.

Comments

Scot McKnight said…
John,
Show me where I have denied orthodoxy for the sake of love. The issue is not one or the other, the issue that we have to face the fact that though God's Word may be Truth, our articulations of truth in our cultural contexts are always limited.
John Umland said…
i'm sorry if you felt smeared by my thought that "some" leaders do
this. i have big concerns regarding pagitt and mclaren. i don't share
your agnosticism on hell in its traditional understanding, but i
haven't made my entry on that yet.
however, you do contradict yourself in your last statement, by making
an all-encompassing truth statement denying the ability to make
all-encompassing truth statements.
i think the EC needs theologians, and you are the best one alive right
now. keep blogging. you bring articulated theology to this whole
conversation.

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