“Over against both of these positions, I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of ‘knowing’ that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence ‘realism’), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiraling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence ‘critical’). This path leads to critical reflection on the products of our enquiry into ‘reality’, so that our assertions about ‘reality’ acknowledge their own provisionality” (The New Testament and the People of God, p. 35.)
The problem here is not Wright’s realism, but rather that there is not enough realism. And an additional problem is not that it is critical, but rather that it is not nearly critical enough. The approach outlined here, which appears to me to undergird Wright’s entire project, is suspended from a giant invisible skyhook.
So let’s be a little more critical. The process we are urged to follow here is to go along the “spiraling path of appropriate dialogue.” Pointing back to the word I just italicized, how are we to know what that is?
When we are critical, we are appealing to a standard. What is that standard? Who sets it? When we use words like appropriate, we are appealing to a standard. What is that standard? Who sets it?
When Christians appeal to Scripture (as they ought to do), they are immediately challenged with regard to their hermeneutic and their epistemology. Fair enough. But if someone appeals to a hidden standard just beneath the surface of what appears to be placid water (“appropriate dialogue is what respectable academics engage in”), very few people raise the hermeneutical and epistemological challenge. But such a challenge is equally pertinent and equally relevant. The challenge is inescapable.
Our assertions about reality cannot universally acknowledge their own provisionality. If they could, then this judgment would itself be provisional, setting us free to be dogmatic elsewhere. The human mind was created by God in such a way that unless it finds traction on dogma somewhere, it cannot function at all. There is therefore no divide between dogmatists and non-dogmatists. The division is between those who are dogmatic about this and those who are dogmatic about that. There are red dogmatists and there are the blue ones. There are dogmaticians who are right, and there is that larger tribe of them who are, to use a quaint term employed by our grandfathers, “wrong.” But absolutely no one is provisional about everything.