In his second chapter, John Franke says a number of reassuring things, that would have been just fine in another setting. But here, they are not. For example and to wit:
“An understanding of the situated and contextual character of truth and Christian theology provides a theological framework from which to embrace Christian pluralism without compromising the commitment to ultimate truth entailed by the Christian confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ” (p. 17).
And then this:
“From the perspective of Christian faith, with its conviction that God has been revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, we can affirm the reality of ultimate or transcendent truth even as we acknowledge the interpretive character of human knowledge” (p. 15).
He critiques the cultural relativists, kinda. The problem is that the way he set the difficulty up in chapter one means that he can’t really say these things consistently. It is easier to saw off the branch you are sitting on than it is to reattach that branch to the tree, and still less to sit on it again.
He has already told us that truth is plural because of different perspectives among many different Christians. Not only so, but he has said that these different perspectives are not over trivial things, like making the sign of the cross with three fingers or two, or baptizing with heads upstream or downstream. No, he says these are “matters [that are] central to the faith” (p. 6). They are at the “very core of that faith” (p. 6). Like what?
“What is God like? How can we know God? Who is Jesus Christ and how are we to understand his life and mission? What is the gospel? What is the kingdom of God? What is salvation? What is the Bible and how are we to interpret and understand it? What is the church? What is the ultimate destiny of human beings? The list goes on and on” (p. 6).
This means, if his argument is to hold water at all, that we have to confess different plural truths about what God is like, who Jesus is, what the Bible is, and so on. That being the case, why does Franke retreat to the language of ultimate and transcendent truth? One possibility is that Franke is using “ultimate and transcendent truth” as a Kantian place-holder, confessing it to be singular because it is unknowable. As soon as it becomes knowable, wherever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, they will discover that they know it different, and
wham, we are back at our plurality in truths. But of course, if it is singular because unknowable, then the question should be raised (by
somebody), how can we
know that? Another possibility is that “ultimate and transcendent truth” has been relativized. It is
our ultimate truth.
Franke is trying to split the difference on an issue where differences cannot be split.
“In the first instance, the notion of ultimate truth is eradicated in the name of tolerance, and in the second it is reified as though it were a commodity that can be easily accessed and controlled by human beings and put to use in ways that empower its holders at the expense of others” (p. 18).
He wants to chide the cultural relativists for saying they can eradicate ultimate truth, and then he wants to chide the dogmatists for successfully eradicating it. Ultimate truth that can be “reified” isn’t ultimate truth, but rather an idolatry-ridden phrase in the mouths of theological blowhards. But the contrast is not between deniers of ultimate truth and false affirmers of it.
The issue is not faith communities, or hypocrites, or relativists, or dogmatists. The issue is whether the triune God of Scripture made the heavens and earth, and whether He did this over the course of five days before there were any faith communities to talk about it. Would Christ be Lord of heaven and earth if there were no Christians? Would God be true if every man were a liar?
Another way of putting this is by asking Franke whether he holds to the correspondence view of truth (which is necessary in order to believe in truth at all). Certain phrases he uses raise the suspicion that he does not — “from the perspective of,” “ultimate truth entailed by the Christian confession,” and so on. Sounds kind of coherency-like to me. The difference is this: do we say that the ultimate truth is out there, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whether or not anybody likes it, or do we say that “ultimate truth” is a necessary axiom in order for our kind of “doing theology” to be coherent downstream? The difference is whether we say it because our statement corresponds to the way things actually are, or whether we say it because we say those kinds of things in our traditions, and from our perspective.
One last comment on whether the true God can be known by man. The apostle Paul says that His invisible nature and divine attributes are clearly seen by everybody. The problem is not that the theological complexies are so hard that we cannot see Him. The real problem is that our hearts are so hard that we cannot see Him.
