A Critique
Much could be said about the various aspects surrounding SOK as it relates to hermeneu- tics which have been discussed thus far. Once again, time and space permit only a brief critique of a few of these issues. We will first examine SOK in general, and then we will critique it as it relates to presuppositional apologetics.
First, the SOK idea is to be commended for pointing out the importance of recognizing the various influences on our thinking and understanding. It is certainly the case that we have all been, and continue to be, influenced by a variety of factors that contribute to our preunderstanding and world view. We readily acknowledge that no one approaches a text, or any communication, with a view from nowhere. As Howe notes, “...we do not deny the fact that everyone encounters the world from a presuppositional framework of understanding [not to be confused with presuppositional apologetics]. In fact, we acknowledge that contemporary theorists have conclusively demonstrated that the presuppositional framework constitutes the very possibility of knowledge and understanding.”32
Regardless of the truthfulness or benefits of certain aspects of SOK, there are several problems as well. The major problem facing this way of thinking, at least as it is apparently understood by Osborne and VanHoozer, is that it is self-defeating. Recall that Osborne, an evangelical scholar, said, “Since neutral exegesis is impossible, no necessarily ‘true’ or final interpretation is possible,” and VanHoozer said, “When it comes to interpreting texts, honesty forbids certainty.” One must ask the obvious questions of these views. For instance, if a neutral view is needed in order to arrive at objective knowledge, or a “final interpretation,” is the view that there are no neutral views itself neutral or is it a product of one’s own world view? If it is neutral, then it has proven false the assertion that neutrality is impossible. If it is not neutral, then it should be ruled out as a universally true and objective view. The same critique applies to the idea that honesty forbids certainty. Should I be certain of that? If not, then the possibility of certainty seems to remain on the table.
Moreover, is it a necessarily true and final interpretation of the facts that there is no necessarily true and final interpretation of the facts? When carried to the extreme of denying the very possibility of objective knowledge or interpretation, the SOK view becomes absurd and necessarily false. Therefore, while one’s interpretation may be influenced by one’s preunderstanding and world view, the possibility of objectivity remains open. To see how objectivity is still possible despite SOK, we must briefly examine a second major problem assumed in this paradigm and modern philosophy in general.
Recall that modern philosophy, as opposed to the scholastics, concluded that knowledge begins in the mind and that our ideas are that which we know rather than that by which we know. This resulted in the unbridgeable gap between our minds and extra-mental reality. As Adler observes, “Those who hold the mistaken view of ideas as that which each individual directly apprehends — the immediate objects of which each individual is conscious — lock each of us up in the private world of his or her own subjective experience.”33
Ultimately, this whole notion is self-defeating as well. One could not know that the object of his thoughts is nothing but his own subjective idea and not the real world “out there” without having at least some knowledge about what was actually “out there” in order to know that it was unknowable. But this is the very possibility which is being denied. To put it another way, this entire modern idea of subjective knowledge is said to be objectively true for everyone! If that is true, how could one possibly know that without having at least some knowledge of reality outside of one’s own ideas?
Furthermore, modern philosophical notions are also false from a strictly metaphysical standpoint. As has been said, Descartes can be credited with sparking the abandonment of scholastic metaphysics. It is often believed today that modern thinking simply proved the scholastics, based in Aristotelianism, false. As philosopher Edward Feser notes, however, the actual state of affairs is quite different,
The agenda determined the arguments rather than the other way around....Hence, modern science [and by implication, modern philosophy], far from refuting Aristotle’s metaphysics, was simply defined in such a way that nothing that smacked of Aristotelian formal and final causes and the like would be allowed to count as truly “scientific.”...The game must be rigged so that Aristotle and St. Thomas cannot even get onto the field; then, centuries later, the successors of the early moderns, quite pleased with the results of their handiwork and not too concerned with how it was achieved, can pretend that this refusal to play the game counted as a “victory” [emphasis in original].34
Since we now have reasons to doubt the veracity of the modern starting point, perhaps it would behoove us to reexamine the Aristotelian/Thomistic tradition. Such an endeavor is too broad for this project, but suffice it to say that the Thomistic notions of act/potency, form/matter, intellect/will, possible/active intellect, etc., which comprise the view known as Moderate Realism, provide the necessary ingredients for reality to be knowable and objectivity to be possible. Aquinas’ epistemology, based on his metaphysics, avoids the extremes of Plato’s ultra-realism and modern philosophy’s nominalism while adequately accounting for our experience and knowledge of that experience.
For Aquinas, your mind is in fact a tabula rasa that can be written on in certain ways via sense experience according to the nature of reality.35 In short, he does not hold to the notion of knowledge as justified true belief. Rather, for Aquinas, knowledge is a metaphysical event in which the form of the thing in the real world (physical reality being a combination of form and matter) is taken into the mind, so to speak. The form comes to essentially exist in both the mind and the thing in reality so that the two are now, in a sense, one.36 In brief,
Sensation involves perceptions of individual things, which give rise to the images or phantasms of the imagination and memory. The visual perception you have of a cat, for example, is later recalled in the mental image you have of what the cat looked like....[The active intellect] strips away all...individualizing features of a phantasm so as to produce a truly universal concept or “intelligible species,” leaving you (for instance) with the idea not just of this or that particular cat, but of “catness” in general, of that which is common to all cats. The abstract concept is then stored in the possible intellect.37
It is important to note that the “intelligible species” is not what is actually being known. Rather, it is that by which the cat, in this case, is being known. As Feser concludes,
There are not two things, a subjective representation (of a triangle, cat, or whatever) and an external object (the actual cat or triangle), which would raise the question of how the one gets in contact with or represents the other. There is just one thing, a form, which...exists in two ways, an “entitative” way (in this case, as instantiated in matter so as to comprise with it a material object) and an “intentional” way (that is, in the intellect).38
Thus, there is no gap between your ideas and the world “out there” because you are actually knowing the world as it is. Analogously, this is how communication is understood as well. The words (matter) serve to convey the meaning (form) of those words so that the intellect can apprehend them and proceed to make judgements. It is certainly possible to be mistaken and to form judgements based on inadequate information. Nevertheless, we know that objectivity is at least possible.
In addition, since it is the real world that we are able to know and make judgements about, we can see that our judgements, and objectivity in general, are based on the foundational principles of thought and being known as first principles, or Transcendental Presuppositions (not to be confused with Kant’s transcendental forms/categories). You cannot think without using first principles. These Transcendental Presuppositions include things like the laws of noncontradiction, excluded middle, and identity. Christian apologist Norman Geisler puts it this way,
The intellectual knowledge of first principles rests in judgment made about the objects of sensible knowledge. First, by way of sensation and abstraction the intellect apprehends that things are and something of what they are. Then, by way of judgment the mind knows that being is and non-being is not. From these judgments arises the first principle of knowledge that “being is not nonbeing,” which is the principle of noncontradiction.39
To deny these undeniable and universally valid laws is to use them, and thus affirm them. Geisler notes, “The basic laws of thought are self-evidently true....The only direct ‘proof’ of them is to state clearly their meaning, so that their self-evident nature becomes intuitively or immediately obvious. First principles, then, are not only indemonstrable but are actually undeniable.”40
Howe summarizes by saying,
...this position maintains that there is an undeniable and unavoidable reality on the basis of which certain undeniable first principles are based. Rather than proposing that one can construct a world view by a deductive process from these undeniable first principles, [Moderate Realism] holds that these first principles are grounded in reality and all truth claims are reducible to first principles, not deducible from first principles. These principles are discoverable because of the nature of reality and the fact that the mind is able to know the real world directly [emphasis mine].41
Therefore, neutrality, or a view from nowhere, is not needed for the possibility of objectivity due to the nature of reality and the Transcendental Presuppositions which enable us to examine our preunderstanding and world view and adjudicate between differing and conflicting opinions, interpretations, and truth claims. Without these first principles, we would be lost in the subjective sea of relativism swimming around with our very cool, yet hopelessly colored, 3-D glasses.
Read for Part 4, A Critique of the Sociology of Knowledge and Presuppositionalism and Conclusion.
END NOTES
32 Howe, Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation, 465.
33 Adler, Ten Philosophical Mistakes, 19.
34 Edward Feser, The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), 175-176.
35 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ: A Concise Translation (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1991), I, 79, 2.
36 Ibid. I, 14, 1.
37 Edward Feser (2009-09-01). Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide (Kindle Locations 2357-2365). Oneworld Publications (academic). Kindle Edition.
38 Ibid., Kindle Locations 2402-2405.
39 Norman L. Geisler, Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Appraisal, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publish- ers, 2003, 87.
40 Ibid., 79.
41 Howe, Objectivity in Biblical Interpretation, 469.