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CARL HENRYS GOD, REVELATION AND AUTHORITY:
MODERNIST, FOUNDATIONALIST
METHODOLOGY?
__________________
A Paper
Presented to
Dr. Joseph Wooddell
Criswell College
__________________
In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for PHI 502
__________________
by
Michael Metts
May 18, 2014
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION
.......................................................................................................1
Modernity and Foundationalism
..................................................................................1
Ren Descartes
....................................................................................................2
John Locke
..........................................................................................................3
Foundationalism
..................................................................................................5
Carl Henry's Theological Method
...............................................................................6
Charges of Foundationalism
........................................................................................9
Postconservative Criticism
..................................................................................9
Postliberal Criticism
..........................................................................................12
Answering the Criticism
............................................................................................13
CONCLUSION
.........................................................................................................16
BIBLIOGRAPHY
.....................................................................................................18
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CARL HENRYS GOD, REVELATION AND AUTHORITY:
MODERNIST, FOUNDATIONALIST
METHODOLOGY?
Whether a result of the rapid spread of postmodernism following
the linguistic turn in
philosophy, or the growing influence of narrative theologians of
the Yale school, evangelical
theologians are becoming increasingly favorable towards
postmodern approaches to
understanding Christian doctrine. In this age of postmodern
influence, the propositionalism
evidenced in former evangelical theologies has been criticized
as modernist, foundationalist
philosophy by recent critics. Chiefly among those criticized is
neo-evangelical Carl F. H. Henry
(1913-2003). This paper will examine Henrys theological method
for evidences of modernist,
foundationalist philosophical influence, limited in scope to
selections from the first and third
volume of his magnum opus, God, Revelation and Authority, and
evaluate both postconservative
and postliberal criticisms of his work. The conclusion is that
while Henry does display a weak
foundationalist influence, it is of an entirely different sort
than the anthropocentric rationalism of
Enlightenment thinkers.
Modernity and Foundationalism
Beginning with the work of geometrician1 and founder of modern
philosophy Ren
1On the importance of geometry for Descartes and his philosophy
see Colin Brown, From the Ancient
World to the Age of Enlightenment, in Christianity and Western
Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas and
Movements, vol 1, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1990;
reprint 2010) 178-84. Descartess ideal and method
was modelled on mathematics (179). Brown quotes Descartes
himself in his modernist and inestimably influential
work Discourse on Method: Those long chains composed of very
simple and easy reasonings, which geometers
customarily use to arrive at their most difficult
demonstrations, had given me occasion to suppose that all
things
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Descartes (1596-1650), but also inclusive of the rationalist
empiricist philosopher John Locke
(1632-1704), is a period in which an anthropocentric innate
reason came to be seen as the chief
judge of truth; the pursuit of a truth by which all knowledge is
to be grounded or founded in
certainty is called foundationalism.
Ren Descartes
Descartes, troubled by the conflicting claims which erupted in
the Reformation,
discerned the need for a deeper foundation, a means of
establishing certainty and authority that
could act as the proper and exclusive fulcrum of judgment
concerning biblical interpretation and
varying traditions.2 It should be observed here that Descartes
does not operate as an empiricist,
as does Locke, but solely as an innatist-rationalist. Since
Descartes was a studied geometrician,
his philosophy was deeply influenced by the fine exactitude of
geometrys developmentally
established theorems and proven axioms. Just as the axioms of
geometry were built one upon
another, so would be Descartes method of establishing truth. All
that remained was establishing
a point of origin for all subsequent truths, which Descartes
found not in God, much to the
detriment of theology, but in his own anthropocentric reason
cogito, ergo sum (I think,
therefore I am). That Descartes could doubt demonstrated that he
existed indubitably.3 This was
which can fall under human knowledge are interconnected in the
same way (179-80).
2W. P. Abraham, epistemology, religious, in The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Modern Christian
Thought, ed. Alister E. McGrath, et al. (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993) 156. Calvinist theologian and philosopher Gordon
Haddon Clark writes the following concerning Cartesian
philosophy: if only a single point be found solid, then like
Archimedes we can move the universe. The meaning is that the
beginning foundationalist point acts as authoritative
and certain for subsequent axioms within the system, all of
which can be demonstrated as truthful. Clark, The Works
of Gordon Haddon Clark, Christian Philosophy, vol. 4 (Unicoi,
TN: The Trinity Foundation, 2004), 141.
3If we are deceived, we must be thinking; and if we think, we
exist it is impossible to deny I am
thinking without thinking. Since doubting is a form of thought,
I cannot doubt that I think without thinking the
doubt. I think, therefore, is an indubitable truth. Clark, The
Works of Gordon Haddon Clark, 142.
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the first principle of his philosophy as he explains in his
Discourse on Method:
But immediately I noticed that while I am trying thus to think
everything false, it was
necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And
observing that this truth I am
thinking, therefore I exist was so firm and sure that all the
most suppositions of the
sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could
accept it without scruple as the
first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.4
The existence of God as a perfect being was Descartes second
principle and the
effects of this subordination would become forcibly prescriptive
for the discipline of theological
science until the present day.5 It was as a rationalist,
therefore, that Descartes main argument
for the existence of God was a restatement of Anselms
ontological argument.6 In the Age of
Reason, God came to be grounded in proofs established by the
mind of man.
John Locke
Locke continued heavily in the rationalist tradition of
Descartes. As a rationalist-
empiricist Locke also grounded the existence of God in the power
of the human intellect to the
end that the truths of theism were seen according to reason,
rather than revelation.7 To be fair,
Locke does allow room for divine revelation though to what
degree is debated but reason
4Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 180;
quoting Descartes, Discourse on
Method, Part 4.
5Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 181.
Cf. also Abraham, epistemology,
religious, 156, reason becomes the foundation upon which the
whole of Christian theology has to be erected
methodically.
6Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 182.
Concerning Anselm, however,
Descartes failed to recognize that the intellectual feats of the
Proslogion operated within the context of faith
seeking understanding. Cf. Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and
Authority, 6 vols. (Waco, TX: Word Books,
1976-83; reprint Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999) 1:300: the
Anselmic tendency commended the ontological
argument to later modern philosophers aligned in revolt against
special revelation.
7Abraham, epistemology, religious, 157. In John Locke we see how
a deeply pious Christian and
philosopher works out a rational case for Christianity. The
cosmological and teleological arguments prove the
existence of God; so the truth of theism is according to reason
(157).
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must be judge and guide in everything.8 The order of operations,
to put it in one sense, is
understanding seeking faith rather than the reverse which is the
hallmark of any evangelical
theological tradition certainly the hallmark of a
neo-evangelical heritage.
Like Descartes, Locke was also troubled by the many religious
opinions of his day.
This existence of so many different and conflicting opinions was
partly cause for his important
work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Noted philosopher
Alvin Plantinga explains
Lockes influential work as follows:
The Essay was Lockes attempt to do what he could to put matters
right. Book IV, Of
Knowledge and Probability, is the end of the book both in
comprising the last three
hundred pages or so and in dealing with the question whose
resolution is Lockes goal; and
even in book IV he spends another two hundred pages before
explicitly addressing it. That
main question is: how should we regulate our opinions with
respect to belief in general? In
particular, how should we regulate our opinion with respect to
religious belief?9
Locke was further knowledgeable of Newtonian science which
understood the
universe in a closed, mechanistic causal manner; and mindful of
the implications of Newtonian
science concerning the possibility of miracles.10
Miracles such as resurrection were understood
by Locke to be above reason, meaning that the trustworthiness of
their propositions could not
8Abraham, epistemology, religious, 157. Cf. also Brown, From the
Ancient World to the Age of
Enlightenment, 222: Locke rejected the rationalist idea that the
mind had stamped on it from birth certain primary,
self-evident notions. He likewise repudiated the idea, found in
Cicero by Calvin and his followers, that human
beings have a sense of the deity inscribed on their hearts.
Brown quotes Locke, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, 4.18.2: Reason is the discovery of the certainty
or probability of such propositions or truths, which
the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it
has got by the use of its natural faculties, viz. by
sensation or reflection.
9Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000) 74.
(Emphasis original.)
10Newtons laws of motion helped to establish the mechanical view
of the universe which dominated
physics down to modern times. Newtons Philosophiae Naturalis
Principia Mathematica (1687) gave an account
not only of the motion of bodies on the earth but throughout the
universe. Newtons views raised big questions for
theology. Where did God fit into this mechanistic world? Brown,
From the Ancient World to the Age of
Enlightenment, 218.
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be established by reason.11
Foundationalism
It is clear from the two aforementioned modernists that mans own
innate reason is
both generative and formative for propositional beliefs, and
that this rationalism should operate
under such conditions that any knowledge or belief claim made by
a person must be
authoritatively founded so as to be indubitable to his or her
modern mind. Due to the nature of
foundationalism, axioms of knowledge which form a part of any
intellectual structure are only
upheld when the source of such knowledge is indubitably
grounded. Descartes used the
metaphor of building knowledge on an absolute foundation, hoping
to free us from tradition-
based knowledge.12
And according to Locke, a belief is acceptable only if it is
either itself
certain with respect to propositions that are certain for
me.13
The principle at work in the rationalist philosophy of both
Descartes and Locke is
simply a critical concern to establish a proposition on the
basis of another which is
unquestionably sound beyond criticism. However, evidenced within
the foundationalism of
Descartes and Locke is a rationalist effort for founding
knowledge within an anthropocentric
standard of universal reason; meaning that truthful propositions
cannot be located externally
from mans own independent creaturely ability to
rationalize.14
Rationalism is operative in
11Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment,
224. See also Clark, The Works of
Gordon Haddon Clark, 142, who writes: Lockes view of revelation
may be a little too complicated, or possibly too
disguised, to describe accurately. Although he seems to have
admitted the fact of revelation, some interpreters judge
it to be grudging admission.
12David K. Clark, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology,
Foundations of Evangelical Theology
Series (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003) 153.
13Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 81.
14Cf. Alvin Plantinga, The Reformed Objection to Natural
Theology, in Christian Scholars Review
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relation to the thinking subject and must be governed by the
modern mind, and this, as noted
above, includes the truths of theistic beliefs. Revelation
springs forth from mans reason
Carl Henrys Theological Method
No matter what starting point a reader may choose, it rapidly
becomes apparent when
reading God, Revelation and Authority that Henry identifies any
means of discerning truth which
does not posit at first divine revelation as fundamentally
flawed. Before examining the structures
of his theological method, a few points concerning Henrys work
will help reveal his reasons for
criticizing modernity and the compromises of its rationalistic
and anthropocentric
foundationalism.
According to Henry, Descartes mistakenly proclaims mans own ego,
or individual
intelligence, as the first certainty.15
The fundamental distinction between Henrys methodology
and any modernist one is identified by this claim more than
anywhere else it is found here.
Henrys concern is not expressive of a disinterest in philosophy
or philosophers, on the contrary
he understands both philosophy and theology to operate within
the same plane of objective
reference;16
his concern is rather indicative of a proper Christian
appreciation for an externalist
divine revelation standing sharply opposed to any
anthropocentric innatism such as that found in
the foundationalism of Descartes.17
Whereas modernity posited mans own rational and
epistemic faculties as the grounds of authority and certainty,
Henry grounds certainty in divine
11 no. 3 (1982): 187-198.
15Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:302.
16Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:200.
17Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:76, 301-8.
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revelation.18
The truths of God and therefore of his creation are divinely
granted to the divinely
enabled knower. But this is not to deny that an atheist or
agnostic might have true knowledge of
the natural, created world. A lengthier account of Enlightenment
rationalism seen opposed to
revelation is given by Henry in volume three and may help to
clarify the difference:
There was never a denial that the mind of man has the power, on
which recent modern
knowledge-theory concentrates, of conceptually ordering
phenomenal realities or sense
impressions in a creative way. But the human mind was not
considered to be constructive of
the order of external reality. As the source of created
existence, the Logos of God grounded
the meaning and purpose of man and the world, and objective
reality was held to be
divinely structured by complex formal patterns. Endowed with
more than animal
perception, gifted in fact with a mode of cognition not to be
confused with sensation, man
was therefore able to intuit intelligible universals; as a
divinely intended knower, he was
able to cognize, within limits, the nature and structure of the
externally real world.19
So, against a modernist internalist grounding of truth, Henry
propounds that God has
revealed himself. There are in fact ontic referents to the
knowing individual since he is within
Gods created world; is himself a creature of this creation; and
is in fact created in the image of
God. Henry writes, Reason is a divinely gifted instrument
enabling man to recognize revelation
or truth. He can do this because by creation he bears the image
of God (Gen. 1:26), and is
specially lighted by the divine Logos (John 1:9)20
This understanding of Henry's subsumes
the entire Enlightenment project within an anthropocentric logos
(or reason), showing man to be
lost in his own efforts at rationalizing the natural world apart
from divinely granted revelation.
Rightly understood, divine revelation for Christians is a
philosophical a priori, and not a
subjective conclusion of human reasoning.21
18Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:213-224.
19Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 3:167.
20Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:228.
21Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:201: The Christian
revelation is not to be confronted by
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The first three criteria of Henrys theological method are of
primary importance for
understanding Henry: (1) God in his revelation is the first
principle of Christian theology, from
which all the truths of revealed religion are derived; (2) Human
reason is a divinely fashioned
instrument for recognizing truth; it is not a creative source of
truth; and (3) The Bible is the
Christians principle of verification.22
These criteria do function, in a sense, foundationally for
Henry and his subsequent theses concerning theology, but there
are critical distinctions between
the sort of modernist epistemologies observed beforehand and the
grounding of knowledge that
Henry conceptualizes.
Henry sees himself standing within an evangelical theological
tradition beginning with
Augustine followed by Anselm, Luther and Calvin.23
Each of these theologians enshrine a faith
seeking understanding approach, in one fashion or another, where
the epistemic knower is
divinely gifted with reasoning faculties which by design include
knowledge of the objective
created world, of God himself, and of others. Gods revelation is
what is foundational if the
critic insists that Henry evidences such an epistemology and man
by created design is able to
rationalize, not of his own innate potential, but as consequence
of his operative creaturely
faculties gifted to him by the Creator. Authority is
established, therefore, clearly by God and
revelation. Hopefully, then, the reader of Henry is able to
understand the meaning of his projects
title: God, Revelation and Authority. More desirable would be
for the reader to see Henry as
already prescribed philosophical conceptions to which its
content must be conformed.
22Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:215, 1:225, and
1:229.
23Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:76-7, 183-4, 303-4,
288-300, 322, 323-43.
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establishing as part of evangelical Christian identity a
theology clearly owing no debts to the
works targeted modernist opponents who champion a very obvious
different rationality.
Charges of Foundationalism
There have been numerous objections to Henrys work categorizing
him as a
rationalist, foundationalist, or propositionalist, each
understood in the modernist sense or as
influenced by it; and this is so despite the incredible
aforementioned labors of Henry to present
his work in the traditions of Augustine and the Reformers, and,
more particularly, as a corrective
to the modernist innatism of Cartesian indebted speculative
philosophies. Several critics are
presented here, all of which evidence a clear absence of a
careful understanding of Henry in this
regard; the reader finds, rather, a readiness by critics to
categorize Henry within an outdated fold
of theologians whose work is considered foundationalist
philosophy, chiefly headed by the Old
Princetonian Charles Hodge. Critics of Henry, then, can be
divided into one of two camps: (1)
The postconservative camp, including Henry H. Knight III,
Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke,
and Roger E. Olson. And (2) the postliberal camp, including
George A. Lindbeck and Hans W.
Frei.
Postconservative Criticism
Henry H. Knight III, a postconservative evangelical theologian,
writes the following
of conservatives: The propositionalist approach, while seeking
to be faithful to scripture, has
been led by its apologetic concern to embrace many of the
presuppositions of the
Enlightenment.24
Knight continues his criticism by primarily targeting Henry as
the crown
24Henry H. Knight III, A Future for Truth: Evangelical Theology
in a Postmodern World (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1997) 90.
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thinker of such approaches and explicitly associates his
theological method with Cartesianism.
He states:
Such rationalism enshrines the Cartesian mind/body dualism
within theology, and defines
revelation as the mind of God communicating information to the
human mind. The essence
of the imago Dei and presumably of God is rationality,
understood as a cognitive and
logical capacity.25
While the connection with Descartes is qualified more fairly
than certain other critics, an
obviously absent distinction between the innatism of Cartesian
philosophy and the externalist
and divinely gifted rationality in the understanding of Henry is
confronting. The reader may also
be excused for wondering how critics like Knight make the
connection between Henry and
Descartes to begin with, when the former has written extensively
critical of the latter and is
solely concerned to correct his philosophical speculative
influence. It seems that it is Henrys
propositional understanding of Scripture that incriminates him
as a Cartesian:
If revelation is both rational and true, then Henry believes
that it must also be in the
form of propositions. A proposition is a verbal statement that
is either true or false; it is a
rational declaration capable of being either believed, doubted,
or denied. () It is no
surprise, then, that Henry finds the Bible to be essentially
composed of propositions 26
propositionalists often see themselves as the defenders of
historic Christianity against the
corrosive forces of modernity. Certainly that is their intent.
They are apt to see those who
question strict inerrancy as capitulating to modern relativism
and abandoning objective
truth27
In their mutual criticism against foundationalism,
postfoundationalists Stanley J.
Grenz and John R. Franke also identify Descartes foundationalism
with late nineteenth and
25Knight, A Future for Truth, 91.
26Knight, A Future for Truth, 88; citing Henry, God, Revelation
and Authority, 3:456.
27Knight, A Future for Truth, 90.
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twentieth-century evangelical propositionalist theologies,
connecting Henry with them.28
The
claim is made that such theology is buoyed by the assumptions of
modernity.29
Also likening
Henrys method to that of Hodge, Grenz and Franke criticize:
conservative theologians also searched for a foundation for
theology that could stand
firm when subjected to the canons of a supposedly universal
human reason. Conservatives
came to conclude that this invulnerable foundation lay in an
error-free Bible, which they
viewed as the storehouse for divine revelation. Hence, the great
Princeton theologian,
Charles Hodge, asserted that the Bible is free from all error,
whether of doctrine, fact, or
precept. This inerrant foundation, in turn, could endow with
epistemological certitude, at
least in theory, the edifice the skilled theological craftsman
constructed on it.30
A lengthy case is presented demonstrating conservative
evangelical theology, wrongly thinking
itself as an heir of Reformation epistemology, is actually none
other than a modernist
foundationalism indebted to the rationalist philosophy of
Descartes.31
This is said to be the case
because an inerrant Scripture forms the foundation for Henrys
theological truth claims, rather
than God and creaturely epistemic realities of reason. However,
the error free Bible that Grenz
and Olson want to posit within Henrys foundationalism is rather
the result of it, and developed
within the context of a greater, more foundational theological
method. But in defense of their
own postfoundationalist theology, they write:
Above all, however, postmodern, chastened rationality entails
the rejection of
epistemological foundationalism. In the modern era, the pursuit
of knowledge was deeply
influenced by the thought forms of the Enlightenment, with
foundationalism lying at its
heart. The goal of the foundationalist agenda is the discovery
of an approach to knowledge
that will provide rational human being with absolute,
incontestable certainty regarding the
truthfulness of their beliefs. According to foundationalists,
the acquisition of knowledge
28Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism:
Shaping Theology in a Postmodern
Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)
3-54.
29Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 13.
30Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 34.
31Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 29-35.
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ought to proceed in a manner somewhat similar to the
construction of a building.
Knowledge must be built on a sure foundation.32
Roger E. Olson is one more critic of foundationalism who shows
sentiment for the
work of Grenz and Franke and their postfoundationalist criticism
of Henry.33
As for his own
criticism, Olson somewhat equivocally writes,
Although Henry was not a classical rationalist in the Cartesian
sense he did tend to
elevate reason to a special governing role in Christian theology
and he regarded revelation
as primarily an intellectual phenomenon. According to Henry,
Divine revelation is a
mental activity. For him, Gods self-revelation is an
intelligible disclosure that possesses
propositional expressibility, which makes it amenable to
rational systematization. He
eschewed any probabilistic approach to theology and sought for
certainty for theologys
conclusions (doctrines) based on logical deduction from
foundational axioms.34
Again, indebtedness to Descartes is posited of Henry indirectly
through identifying
both thinkers with rationalist foundationalism, while also
neglecting an explicit demonstration of
how such a connection is made other than to generalize about
Henrys rationalist theological
method.
Postliberal Criticism
Probably more influential of the theological methodological mood
in evangelical
theology than any sincere desire to move beyond an understood
and operative modernist
rationalism is the book highly regarded within evangelical
circles: The Nature of Doctrine.35
George A. Lindbecks own method, as more conservative critics
have properly assailed, is in
32Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 23.
33Roger E. Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming: The
Postconservative Approach to Evangelical
Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007) 130-1.
34Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming, 130.
35George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and
Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th
Anniversary ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 2009).
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essence a sociological impression of religious community rules
without much remaining for
attribution to divine revelation. Doctrines have propositional
value only within believing
communities, or propositional values only in a strict
functionalist sense.36
But attempting to
understand how objective truth might function within such a
model clearly initiates confusion
when it is recognized that different communities believe
different things.
Lindbecks work has had a far reaching impact in the discussion
of both ecumenism
and theological method, even within evangelicalism as some
pockets become increasingly
favorable of sociological and communal models of theological
doctrine, e.g., Grenz and Franke,
against a divinely revealed, rationally intelligible model such
as found in the work of Henry.
Why this is so continues to impress anyone who observes theology
to include in any meaningful
way divine revelation. For, what is revealed becomes essential
to doctrine as opposed to what a
religious community might value. But this is getting too far
ahead.
With his colleague Lindbeck, Hans W. Frei also dismisses Henry,
criticizing his
method as foundationalism. Writing of Henry, Frei states: the
basic affirmation [is] that
theology must have a foundation that is articulated in terms of
basic philosophical principles.37
Answering the Criticism
While critics are united in their association of Henry with
foundationalist rationalism,
and perhaps they are correct to a degree, their criticisms seem
to regard only the form of Henrys
method and not its specific content; content which might go a
long way in providing clues as to
why Henry dismisses his so-called modernist philosophical
parentage. Of course in philosophy
36Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 50-1.
37Hans W. Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. by George
Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 24.
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one is always philosophizing, even when one thinks otherwise,
and Henry is no exception. But
is it right to dismiss so readily as simply modernistic
foundationalism a project as extensive as
God, Revelation and Authority simply because it bears some
semblance in structure with
foundationalist philosophy, without looking more closely at the
internal workings which might
explain such a similarity? Is such similarity only
superficial?
For some critics who are so poorly read of Henry, the assumption
is that the
foundation upon which he builds is the inerrancy of Scripture.
Henry is camped with those who
espouse an unassailable and bulletproof textbook for scientific
and propositional compilation,
devoid of any meaningful emotive aspects of religious authority.
Again, it invites curiosity on the
part of the student, however, to question how such conclusions
are reached, for they are not
reached certainly by reading God, Revelation and Authority. Gods
general revelation of himself
to the rational conscience of every man is what is foundational
for Henry, i.e., the imago Dei, not
the inerrant Scriptures. In the ordering of his volumes it is no
mistake that the subject of
inerrancy in Henrys work does not arise for definite treatment
until volume four, which is
certainly a delayed treatment for any theologian who might
regard such doctrine as foundational
for all his subsequent theological theorems. Such ordering would
be tantamount to placing
prolegomena after treating the dogmas of God and Scripture
perhaps creation as well.
Henrys theological, philosophical structuralization of revealed
biblical theism, as he
likes to refer to it, also follows no clear pattern of basing
one proposition upon another in the
manner of the geometrist mind of Descartes or subsequent
internalist speculative philosophies. It
may be granted, however, that to a certain degree such
statements of Henry as follows do
evidence a very broad foundationalist structure:
Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of
Christianity included; reason is the
instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying
principle; logical consistency is a
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negative test for truth and coherence a subordinate test. The
task of Christian theology is
to exhibit the content of biblical revelation as an orderly
whole.38
This is, according to Henry, his governing theological method in
concentrated form.
While such methodology may evidence a degree of foundationalism,
it could only be a very
weak form as opposed to the strong foundationalism resulting
from the troubled conscience of
Descartes. But to this the critical mind beckons us: Do we all
not, as Alvin Plantinga has written,
have a sort of noetic structure that believes some things on the
basis of others? Is not
foundationalism to a certain extent part of common
sensibilities, understood in no
philosophically distinguished way? Even in the carefully written
work of Grenz and Franke one
finds language betraying weak foundationalist philosophical
influence, such as their view that
the church functions, as in Lindbeck, as a basis in establishing
doctrinal values. In fact, the
term basis appears numerous times throughout the
postfoundationalist work of Grenz and
Franke, and frequently in the form of very telling interrogative
sentences such as on what basis
something critically can be held. The term is also found in
critical subheadings and in
conclusions to critical motifs. In their chapter on the
community as an integrative motif, The
Basis of Theology is observed as a subheading; and again in the
chapter on eschatology, The
Basis for an Eschatological Theology.39
38Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:215. (Emphasis
original.)
39Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 232, 252. Additional
mention of basis is found in the
following places: 90, Reading the Bible as one canon forms the
basis of reading the texts of the Hebrews as
Christian scripture, and it suggests what constitutes the
interpretive center for reading both Testaments together.;
160, But on what basis and in what sense can we speak of culture
as the voice of the Spirit?; 253, We maintain,
therefore, that an eschatological theology is closely connected
to the biblical narrative. But on what basis can we
make this claim?; 259, We have outlined as well the basis for
the claim that the way toward an eschatological
theology leads through the biblical narrative, the story of Gods
action in history, which cradles the Christian
community. There are at least twenty additional uses of the term
in their work in the sense revealed here. Are we
really beyond foundations if we still need to base components of
an evangelical theology?
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16
But all of this misses the point. Henry has labored to establish
philosophical
categories for theological truth, a Christian philosophy of
ontology, epistemology, axioms, etc.,
and not as a foundationalist but in accordance with long
recognized truths, such as God as
Creator, man as made in his image, man as an intelligible,
thinking, and reflective creature, and
revelation as cognitive, rational communication. The universal
rationality of man and his clear
ability to think reflectively, critically and intelligibly, was
the will of the Creator who gifted man
with such abilities. With critics nowhere showing appreciation
for Henrys content and the
notion that it may be driving perceived foundationalism, rather
than the reverse, one question in
particular becomes gravitational: Why have we dismissed his
work? It presses the student to
wonder if postconservative evangelical critics are simply
yielding to the critical pressures of the
university postmodern ethos by acquiescing to the hazardous path
forward charted by
postliberals. For it is within the anti-authoritative ethos of
postmodernism that the critique of
reason extends beyond the works of any source and applies
directly to the point of origin for any
source; meaning, perhaps, Henry has been discredited, not
because of any contradiction
discoverable within his work, but because the postmodernist
critique circumnavigates the work
in question and applies itself directly to the thinking mind
operative behind it. This is clearly
incompatible with Christianity which without question
understands truth only with a capital t.
Conclusion
By dismissing it based on form without regard for its content,
the work of Henry will
continue to haunt conservative evangelicals who have capitulated
with the postmodernist ethos
and have no demonstrable or agreed means of progressing forward
of their own making within
such an ethos; and no means by which divine revelation can
function authoritatively within the
sphere of creation. As both a philosopher and a theologian Henry
answers speculative modernist
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17
philosophies while providing structure for an evangelical mind
that is biblical, defensible, and
incorporative of reason.
While he may be identified as a weak foundationalist, the
student of Henry wonders if
his shallow dismissal by critics may somewhat mirror the early
churchs dismissal of Aristotle,
before Augustine saw fit to plunder the Egyptians and retake all
truth as Gods, thus saving
classicism in the process. Like Aristotles later renewal in
medieval theology, the critics may
find that their dismissal of Henry will only result in his
return at a later time to become
influentially formative again for future evangelical
theologies.
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18
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