EMERGENT DAY TWO

Thursday morning

Mauve Learning Community: Truth by Todd Hunter and John Franke

in days past, the substance was considered settled. all we worried about was presentation. today is different. today the substance itself is questioned. the little white church on the corner with the parish pastor who knows all the answers has little value and not certain meaning. what does this mean? this means practitioners need to be missionaries not parish pastors. this means we must have epistemological humility. while there is truth--there is meaning--we ALWAYS perceive it thru our filters. Todd holds to critical realism. reality is real, but we view it thru our critical faculties and come ever closer to truth.

epistemology is the study of truth/knowledge and what it's like. we look at reality thru our filters and philosophers help us look at those filters. the culture of leate modernity has a lot of anxiety about truth. this anxiety began to develop in the Renaissance of the 1400s. the initial response was to find a certain beginning point. this is the foundationalism of rene decartes. after this, believing in order to understand changed to understanding in order to believe. the problem is that this assumes a general-universalist-individualistic truth. such a notion of truth is now rightly questioned. could it be that truth is understood thru narrative and participation? there are issues. first, head issues. second, ministry issues. third, heart issues.

John 6:68-69 seems to say that a person--Jesus the Holy One--is the place of truth. in fact, Jesus himself claimed to BE the truth (John 14:6). so, if the truth is a person--God in flesh--what does it mean toknow the truth? Add to this the proverb "the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7), and the nature of truth and knowing becomes something more relational than intellectual. truly, intellect is important, but could it not be that mind, will, and emotion are the means God has put within us to be in relationship with himself, others, and creation? if this is the case, how do we recast propositional truth statements?

more later...