One of the most baffling things about the postmodern drift in Reformed and evangelical circles is the idea that certainty is entirely and completely dependent on foundationalism. And, if foundationalism goes, then there goes our ability to know anything for certain. Now foundationalism is the philosophical view that certitude must be based on certain “basic” beliefs which are indubitable. Modern foundationalism began with Descartes, who sought to build up everything from his famous cogito ergo sum, and all forms of foundationalism (strong and weak) have all sorts of problems. But a false dichotomy has developed here, where it is simply assumed that if Christians abandon foundationalism, then postmodernism is there waiting for them with open arms.
In a recent article my friend Phil Johnson takes my friend John Armstrong to task on this point — and while I agree with Phil’s point, I have a question about how he gets there. Phil defends foundationalism, and John Armstrong has apparently been persuaded that foundationalism is not the case (which in itself is just fine with me). But John appears to think that rejecting foundationalism means that we have to give up certainty. Phil knows that we must never give up certainty, and so he sticks with foundationalism. I would like to suggest that all of us try something else.
If we start with the biblical story, we see in multiple places that the gospel produces countless martyrs, witnesses, and not vacillating spectators whose testimony is “I guess.” The biblical message, and servants of the biblical message, speak authoritatively — even though they did not travel through the Greco-Roman world dispensing nothing but arid propositions. Jesus has saved us from our sins, and those sins include both epistemological arrogance and confusion. That is a given, and so we can see that the so-called humility of the postmodernists is a snare and a delusion. And the false certainty of the modernist is no better.
This relates to the mind-numbing postmodern error of equating propositions with statements like “All triangles have three sides” and “Socrates was a mortal.” In short, people think that propositions are the constituent elements of a syllogism. And this is why the pomos says that we need to get away from our emphasis on propositions and turn instead to story. But this is almost exactly like saying that we need to get away from relying on nouns so much, and focus our attention on story. “Stop thinking about bricks so much. Think about the house!” Stories are built out of nouns . . . and propositions. There is another kind of proposition. “Once there was a little boy who lived in a purple castle, surrounded by three dragons.”
Modernism and postmodernism agree on the fact that story does not bring any kind of legitimate certainty. Modernism thinks to find certainty elsewhere (in logic, in science, in politics), and postmodernity recognizes that everything is story, and yet agrees with the modernist that a story cannot bring certainty.
But Christians, of all people, should know that the story God has told us is the only thing that can bring assurance.