Here is an insightful discussion on N.T. Wright’s critical realism (conversants come from a Reformed background, with a commitment to Cornelius Van Til’s pre-suppositionalism approach to Christian apologetics). I cannot give an opinion on Cornelius Van Til, as I have only recently come across his ideas, so these are running thoughts. This post is born out of an interest in theological contributions on epistemic debates regarding narrative and tradition. After all, these debates could be generalised beyond its immediate context and consider narrative, in its broadest sense. For example, to what extent is knowledge situated and can our psycho-biography, as an onto-genesis, make a pre-suppositionalism unavoidable and thus, from a Reformed perspective, unable to commit to God or good, as autonomous free will? If that is the case, then this pre-supposes that our fallen nature cannot account for itself, and the purposes it seeks for itself – we do not choose God but are converted and this conversion is a sovereign act.
In a sense this is theology gone sociological, it accounts for human agency and it understands its dis-capacity as a bondage to sin (an inherited nature posit has a transcendental element but still made effectual inter-subjectively) embodied within a social trajectory. If that is the case, then the social worlds we create are fallen and any attempt to transcend this matrix, through constructing our own meta-narratives, unleashes only further misery, as we seek apart from God what can never be achieved – human knowledge can never relate to the world as it really is.
Pre-suppositionalism fits with Calvin’s conception of sovereign grace and more seeks to provide sociological insights, within a theocentric system. The problem with Critical Realism? It still assumes an autonomous man, that can judge and commit. This approach, I believe, though not one of the hard ‘bible told me so’ pre-suppositional approaches, remains circular . First it assumes to know the world as it is, including the Will of God and His works and then negates its epistemic standpoint. How do we reach this conclusion, if we have no capacity to? Even Common grace, as bestowed, is sovereign and the knowledge it gives to, is at most restraining. In other words, it commits an epistemic fallacy, by negation – a self-defeating posit. Perhaps it is the work of effectual grace, the elect are privy to this, but again in what way is this made known? Experientially?
