Of Propositions and Carsons, Pipers, and Veiths

Yesterday I grouped D.A. Carson, John Piper, and Gene Edward Veith into a pithy statement on their inclinations toward the Western theological mode Eastern Orthodox Clark Carlton critiques as propositional and geometrical.  Most people are not going to say point blank: "I can know all truth absolutely," and I don’t think Carson, Piper, or Veith would.  But I think, getting back to the point of humility in theology and the dichotomy of proposition versus Word, Carson, Piper, and Veith both are strictly modernist in this sense.

Carson often clarifies that truth cannot be known absolutely, yet he makes an interesting point to compare with Carlton’s critique of Western theology in his book The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism:

A mathematical example I sometimes used is the asymptote.  A curved line may approach a straight line asymptotically, never quite touching it but always getting closer, so close, in fact, that all of the differential and integral calculus—that branch of mathematics without which it would have been impossible to put human beings on the moon—depends upon such models of closeness.  The model is useful precisely because it never touches the axis.  In exactly the same way, we may not aspire to absolute knowledge of the sort only Omniscience may possess, but the ‘approximation’ may be so good that it is adequate for placing human beings on the moon. (121)

This statement slams directly into Carlton’s critique of Western theology as being filled with geometrical axioms and propositions that guide us into the grey area of "very, very close to God’s knowledge" as almost equal to "God’s knowledge."

Yet, I believe my implication of Carson’s thought as being statically fixed on this type of propositional approach does not do justice to how his thoughts on the matter have become more nuanced, and that is my fault in the earlier post. After writing, I remembered a quote from Carson’s Christ and Culture Revisited that fellow blogger David Opderbeck posted on his site a while back:

On the face of it, we seem set, at least in America, for an unyielding confrontation between foundationalism and postfoundationalism — a ‘take no prisoners’ war in which there can be only winners and losers.
But there is another way. A chastened modernism and a ‘soft’ postmodernism might actually discover that they are saying rather similar things. A chastened or modest modernism pursues the truth but recognizes how much we humans do not know, how often we change our minds, and some of the factors that go into our claims to knowledge. A chastened postmodernism heartily recognizes that we cannot avoid seeing things from a certain perspective (we are all perspectivalists, even if perspectivalists can be divided into those who admit it and those who don’t) but acknowledges that there is a reality out there that we human beings can know, even if we cannot know it exhaustively or perfectly, but only from our own perspective. We tend to slide up to the truth, to approach it asymptotically — but it remains self-refuting to claim to know truly that we cannot know the truth. To set such a modest modernism and such a chastened postmodernism side-by-side is to see how much alike they are. They merely put emphases in different places. (90)

This qualification of Carson’s earlier geometrical axiom of epistemology really gets at the heart of the matter, namely, that as I in a humble approach to truth modernists and postmodernists merely put emphases in different places, but are very close to unity on how to approach truth.  The key here, once again, is the humility to admit such an approach to truth.

As for Piper, he says this, among other things:

"The claim that there is no one standard for truth and falsehood that is valid for everyone is rooted most deeply in the desire of the fallen human mind to be free from all authority and to enjoy the exaltation of self. This is where relativism comes from….Relativism is a revolt against the objective reality of God. The sheer existence of God creates the possibility of truth. God is the ultimate and final standard for all claims to truth—who he is, what he wills, what he says is the external, objective standard for measuring all things. When relativism says that there is no standard of truth and falsehood that is valid for everyone, it speaks like an atheist. It commits treason against God….One of the most tragic effects of relativism is the effect it has on language. In a culture where truth is esteemed as something objective and external to ourselves that we should pursue and embrace and cherish and employ for the good of the people, language holds the honorable place of expressing and carrying and transmitting that precious cargo of truth. In fact, a person’s use of language is assessed on the basis of whether it corresponds to the truth and beauty of the reality he expresses.
But when objective truth vanishes in the fog of relativism, the role of language changes dramatically. It’s no longer a humble servant for carrying precious truth. Now it throws off the yoke of servanthood and takes on a power of its own. It doesn’t submit to objective, external reality; it creates its own reality. It no longer serves to display truth. Now it seeks to obtain the preferences of the user." ("The Challenge of Relativism" 2007 Ligonier National Conference)

This statement fits into Carlton’s other critique, that of language as created and therefore imperfect.  Piper sees language as submitting perfectly to its call to express external, objective standard of truth.  This high and personified view of language, one that sees it as a pure vessel, runs counter to the dichotomy of the proposition and the Word once again.  Language’s chief end is proposition.  That is why negative theology reasons that we can only correctly say what God is not, not what God is.  God himself uses negative theology when he names himself "I AM what I AM," a name that does not say what God is like as does El Shaddai ("God Almighty"), but instead declares that he is wholly other.

I think it was right for commenter Kris to call me out on my statement concerning Piper and Carson in yesterday’s post.  I am very appreciative of Carson’s thoughts in Christ and Culture Revisited and see it as being in agreement with my own thoughts on the matter, lest the realization of our inability to fully realize truth lead us not to humility but to despair and relativism.  As for Piper, I think the problem in his thinking on relativism is his approach to language as a kind of Platonic ideal that humans screw up.  Language, as proposition, is birthed from the mouths of men.  The Word is a wholly other language, and when we approach it with our own language we can only do so with a negative theology.  And Veith, well, I already dealt with him here. He refuses to truly engage in real conversation with postmodern thinkers.