Newbigin: Facts, Beliefs, and Reason

I’ve been, as I hinted at earlier, very appreciative of this older but influential work by L. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society.  Another thing that I thought was helpful was Newbigin’s  discussion of reason and what it has to do with facts and our beliefs.  Here’s a bit.

“For a person who dwells in the contemporary cosmopolitan culture, shaped by the reigning dichotomy between ‘facts’ and ‘beliefs,’ it will be natural to relativize all the differing belief systems.  And when in this culture, ‘reason’ is set against the specific, historically shaped tradition of Christian belief, it is obvious that what is happening is that the ‘plausibility structure’ is performing its normal function” (p. 57).

In other words, a person living in her culture with her own set of culturally shaped beliefs and “plausibility structures” will make judgments on other plausibility structures and beliefs from her point of view.  It is normal (albeit a suppression of truth in unrighteousness) for someone outside the Christian faith to relativize Christianity.  Tim Keller and others have made similar comments.

Christians have a different response.  “The Christian on the other hand, will relativize the reigning plausibility structure in the light of the gospel” (ibid.). This is huge: the Christian does not (should not!) retreat into a ghetto where there are no competing belief systems.  Instead, the Christian will let the Scriptures tweak, smash, reshape, or destroy even her own plausibility structure and give her a new way to look at all cultures, beliefs, and plausibility structures.

One more thing that Newbigin says is helpful:

“There is no disembodied ‘reason’ which can act as impartial umpire between the rival claims” (ibid.).  Or, as he puts it elsewhere, “There is no neutral judgment seat from which these rival claims can be adjusted. …There is no form of rationality which is independent of all socially embodied traditions of rationality and which can therefore judge them all” (p. 64).  Right;  atheists and agnostics assume that there is “reason” above all beliefs, cultures, and traditions – but they forget that the reason they exercise functions within (not above!) their own beliefs, culture, and tradition.

I’ll close with Newbigin’s restatement of the above.  “There are no canons of reason which are not part of a socially embodied tradition of rational debate” (p. 64).

More on this later – of course there is more to it.

shane lems

sunnyside wa