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Postmodernism presents a challenge to the Christian view of epistemology. What are some practical ways you, as a Christian educator, can respond to this challenge?
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Through God’s revelation we are able to have knowledge. A post-modern worldview is unable to contribute to any conversation because it states that knowledge is impossible to have. I teach students to keep asking “how do you know that is true” to those that say knowledge is impossible to have. What do they base any of their truth claims?
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I have such a great opportunity to remind students that there are objective truths that do not change based on our feelings. In our discussions in course, many times a student will start with: “I feel like…” I try to remind them that our arguments should be based in Scripture and objective truth rather than our own feelings.
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This is a difficult challenge but having absolute faith everything is possible. Faith is the substance of hope for the evidence of things not seen as the lecturer pointed.
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The challenge is that things can’t exist if they aren’t directly pointed to. Faith, knowing something without clear evidence, challenges this idea. Personally, I call attention to the idea of intuition. Intuition is not tangible in any way, but sometimes we get a sense of what to do or what not to do, how someone will react, how to make choices to keep ourselves safe, etc. Not all things, including faith, are tangible, but it doesn’t mean that they are not real. It sounds like folks might us the example of if something is TANGIBLE … not everything is tangible!
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If our foundation is scripture and we believe it to be 66 books written by over 40 authors and we read and believe the whole book as the inerrant Word of God, then that sets the framework for our existence and our ways of knowing. The experience that we live in is framed by the Lord for our growth and learning processes is predicated on an understanding that there is an absolute truth and that is God, and we are separated from absolute truth by sin. This is counterintuitive to postmodernism which is predicated on emotionality, relativism, and humanism. Naturalism is also infused into that tincture to explain away universal laws set in motion by God. Without God, we don’t necessarily know what is good for us and a sin nature does not lead to thinking or doing what is right for others. Living with a social contract as posited by Rousseau doesn’t suffice because it is founded on nothing. Accountability, integrity, humility, and honour come only through more complete scriptural teaching/understanding. Postmodernism is the opposite, you move the goal posts to wherever one feels they need to be for the individual and there is not one that is righteous.