Reflections On Mclaren And The Emerging Church
REFLECTIONS ON MCLAREN AND
THE EMERGING CHURCH
R. Scott Smith
A significant topic that is capturing the attention of Christians is the emerging church (hereafter, EC). Many senior pastors, parents, and other laypeople have heard about it, or at least of some of the leading authors in the field, such as Brian McLaren. Often, however, I have found that people in these groups know little about the topic, or what McLaren and others actually are saying. But they are concerned, usually because they have heard that in some way or other, EC ideas draw upon postmodernism. On the other hand, many youth workers have been exposed to and influenced by EC ideas, such as through the influence of Youth Specialties or the writings of McLaren, Tony Jones (the national coordinator for Emergent U.S.), and others, whether in books or on Internet blogs.
I wrote Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church (Crossway, 2005) for a lay audience on the EC and Christian postmodernism. As a result, I have had several interesting opportunities and experiences. For instance, when I was speaking at my own church about McLaren's views, a friend came up afterwards to talk. He was about fifty years old, a former elder who also had served on staff with me at a major Christian organization. When he read A New Kind of Christian, he felt like McLaren put his finger on the reasons for some of the painful experiences my friend had encountered in conservative, evangelical churches and that organization.1 I don't think my friend is alone; I too have had some similar experiences, and I think many others have also. McLaren resonates with people at a key level in terms of the problems with the contemporary, American evangelical church, which he thinks are due to the influences of modernity.
Since the book was released, I have had much more interaction with Jones, various bloggers (some of whom are academics) who are both for and against the EC, and even McLaren himself. Those conversations have been worthwhile and insightful as they have allowed me opportunities to interact with and influence those who are part of the EC, hear their responses and criticisms of my works, and better understand their perspectives. Some of these criticisms have prompted my need to reply in a more public way.
Thus, I will summarize my findings from my Truth book to give an introduction to the subject of the EC in terms of its strengths but also its weaknesses. Next, I will give an update of the conversations about that book by sketching McLaren's main replies, to which I will respond. Last, I will survey and reply to the significant criticism of my ideas offered by James K. A. Smith (or simply “Jamie”), a philosopher at Calvin College, which, if correct, would rebut my main concern in Truth about the EC.
McLaren and the Emerging Church:
A Concise Summary of Truth
McLaren was an evangelical pastor, but he encountered various expectations and situations that made him feel like giving up the pastorate. He expected that he had to have “bombproof” answers to peoples' questions, but some issues seem to defy such certainty. He also believed that the gospel and the Christian life could be reduced to simple laws, yet he found that few things in life could be that simple. Moreover, he observed that far too many Christians were arrogant and inauthentic instead of living as humble servants of Jesus.
McLaren's expectations were formed by a particular conception, or framework. When these challenges arose, they helped precipitate a crisis which seemingly could not be answered adequately by that framework. To be a Christian in that same way would perpetuate this crisis. But he also resonated with some peoples' suggestions about changes at work in the Industrial Age and that our Industrial Age faith would change too. Moreover, he met some people who modeled what a “new kind” of Christian might look like.
In A New Kind of Christian, McLaren takes up these and other topics through two fictional characters, Dan Poole, an evangelical pastor in a crisis like McLaren's, and Neo Edward Oliver (“Neo”), the only person with whom Dan can confide. To Dan's surprise, Neo can identify with and even help explain the causes of Dan's experiences. Neo helps identify the source of Dan's crisis with his modern expectations of how the Christian life should be lived, but those expectations and mind-set do not fit in a changing, increasingly postmodern culture. Neo advises Dan to find a “new way” of being a Christian in postmodern times.
What are some of the traits of the modern period, and how has it influenced both the broader culture as well as the church? Instead of providing a philosophical analysis, McLaren tends to focus on more sociological factors that have impacted both. This tends to make his characterization and assessment of modernity highly thought-provoking.
First, McLaren says modernity (roughly mid-1500s to mid-to-late 1900s) has fostered a desire to conquer and control, for instance, through colonization, imperialism, and especially by trying to master our world through science and technology. But this desire has impacted the church, too, when it has tried to exert control by getting a particular political agenda passed into law. Evangelistic “crusades” also imply the idea of a military conquest. Moreover, Christians tend to view evangelism as encounters to convert the person by winning an argument, as though rational acceptance of the truths as presented is all that the person needs to become a follower of Jesus. But in that way we often fail to value a genuine friendship with people. In short, McLaren thinks that methodology is coercive.
Second, the modern era is marked by a quest for certainty and absolute knowledge. For instance, philosophers attempted to find indubitable, universal foundations of knowledge. This “Cartesian foundationalism” has impacted Christians to believe they must have utter certainty in their Christian beliefs, without room for doubts, which must result from their lack of faith. Requiring certainty fosters a third trait, that we become critical and must debunk anyone who disagrees with us. Similarly, Christians often feel they have to prove anyone wrong who disagrees with them, which results in a defensive apologetic. In that process their faith tends to be treated as a rigid belief system that must be accepted instead of a unique, joyful way of living, loving, and serving.2
Third, McLaren thinks modernity is the age of the machine, with mechanistic views of the universe, human beings, and more. Similarly, Christians have accepted this kind of view by treating the Christian life and their relationship with God as simple steps to perform. This treats the Christian life like a “program” of proper inputs which yield appropriate outputs.
Fourth, modernity has emphasized inordinately the autonomous individual, who can legislate his own morals and also thinks he does not need God or others. Likewise, the church has perpetuated this individualism to the detriment of the body of Christ. This mind-set carries over in a rampant consumerism in culture, in which goods and services are persistently niche marketed to individuals, with the message of acquiring more and more to fulfill ourselves. The church, too, has become a purveyor of religious goods and services to meet individuals' needs, who come to services to get what they want but then leave and do not contribute to the life of the church. In modernity's consumeristic orientation, too often the church has competed for “market share” and “clientele” with other businesses and organizations that vie for our attention and loyalties. Instead, the church needs to be a community that is faithful to the Lord Jesus by being a people who are engaged in a mission, to help reconcile the entire world under Jesus as Lord.
Fifth, modernity has influenced society to value analysis as the highest form of thought, and science provides the tools to master all of reality. Scientists search for a grand theory of everything, in which all of reality could be categorized, explained, and mastered by science. Similarly, Christians have developed systematic theologies to categorize and understand all doctrine. But this tends to reduce God to something we can master.
In contrast, McLaren thinks Christians need to observe several cultural changes in the emerging postmodern culture. Postmoderns are quick to detect inauthenticity in people, and they are looking for genuine friendships, particularly in community. Moreover, postmodern people are not looking for a God shrunken down to modern tastes; they are looking for a God who transcends us, who is worthy of our worship, and yet also is immanent with us.
Philosophical changes are also taking place. Through Neo, McLaren states that postmodernism has successfully “deconstructed,” or taken apart, modern thought and exposed it as just another attempt to impose a will to power over people, by telling a story that we can know indubitable truths through reason. But this story, like all others, is told from a particular historical context. Moreover, our viewpoints are always finite, limited, and they have blind spots. We never can be purely objective and lay aside our biases and the influences of our historical, cultural context, especially the pervasive role of language in shaping our perspectives.
Along these lines McLaren makes some provocative comments. Neo tells Dan that history began with our ability to write it,3 as though events and the language used to describe them are inseparable. Elsewhere Neo tells us that a huge part of who we are flows from language.4 But does Neo mean our self-understanding, which we express in language, or does he mean something more? Neo also remarks that we are “stuck” in language.5 Perhaps this means that we work within the limitations of language (understood as verbal and nonverbal behaviors) to express our thoughts, feelings, desires, etc., to others. But if it means that we cannot escape the influences of language, to know reality as it truly is in itself, then we have a much stronger claim.
Finally, Neo explains that though we all live on Earth, we still live in different universes, depending on the kind of God we believe in and our understanding of the master story in which we are a part.6 Sometimes we may speak of living in completely different worlds, in that our experiences and cultures can be so radically different, like the differences I experienced between living in the United States versus in the Congo. But Neo says we live in different universes, not different understandings of the same one.
In summary, McLaren advocates that since the culture is going postmodern, Christians need to contextualize the gospel to reach postmoderns. This is a good missiological insight. Yet McLaren also seems to recommend that we need to reconceive the faith in light of postmodern insights, which have successfully deconstructed modern thought.
In reply, I noted several of McLaren's key contributions, including his stressing our need to live authentically. Postmoderns rightly expect Christians to live authentically if they are truly followers of Christ. Moreover, at least in the United States, we have so many failures of political leaders, such that people tend to assume that politicians are basically looking out for themselves. This collapse of confidence has also hit the church because of the many moral failures of its leaders. Many tend to assume that religious leaders are not really serving God but are just trying to impose their own power over others.
More briefly, McLaren rightly highlights the importance of the body of Christ and the need for Christians to live out the “one anothers” of the faith. He also has provided stimulating ways to consider how modernity has affected the culture and the church. And he is helpful in drawing our attention to the need to be missions minded and how we can use stories powerfully to communicate truths to postmoderns.
But I also raised various concerns with McLaren's ideas. I questioned whether we truly need to embrace a postmodern way of being a Christian to solve the problems he has identified. One counterexample I considered is my church, Trinity Evangelical Free Church in Redlands, California. I argued that Trinity has embraced several of the traits McLaren says mark a postmodern way of being a Christian, such as (1) being missions minded, both globally and locally; (2) serving in practical ways the needs of the disadvantaged in our community; (3) stressing and building community in a variety of ways, even by providing “Pathways” support groups for people facing various struggles; and (4) showing compassion to people in need. Our pastoral staff teaches and models that living the Christian life is far more complex than applying just a system of simple formulas. We also realize that there are important insights to be gained from good psychology, good philosophy, and more. We recognize that life sometimes throws challenging circumstances at us, such as when a person cheats on one's spouse or someone receives a diagnosis of cancer. That is a reason we encourage people to be in a small group, since all of us will face significant challenges and trials every few years. We need others who can help share our “overburdens” and thus fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2).
My church also has embraced a more foundationalist view of knowledge, yet we don't require certainty in our beliefs.7 Trinity is a church of compassionate, missions-minded people who believe in the authority and inerrancy of Scripture but who do not reduce the Christian life to a set of simplistic formulas. We value community and long to glorify God in our worship as well as in the faithful teaching and practice of God's Word. We hold it to be the foundation of our faith. Though we could be mistaken about that, we believe the Bible to be our foundation, due to a careful examination of the evidence, including truths found in other disciplines.
I think Trinity Church is not alone in these traits; if so, such churches are counterexamples to McLaren's claim that to overcome the corrosive effects of modernity we need to embrace a new way of being a Christian in postmodern times.
Updates on the Conversation: McLaren's Replies
After Criswell Theological Review published an article by McLaren, along with my essay on his views, McLaren e-mailed me some cordial, helpful feedback.8 He thought that while I described his view accurately in several places, I seriously misdescribed his ideas elsewhere. In particular, while I accurately depicted him as saying that Christians need to learn a new way of being a Christian in the emerging, postmodern culture, nonetheless he felt I misstated this view whenever I portrayed him as saying that we need to embrace a postmodern way of being a Christian.
While subtle, I think McLaren is right to point out this difference and inaccuracy in my two descriptions. McLaren explicitly stated in our “e-dialogue” that he does not advocate embracing a postmodern way of being Christians. That would be parallel to being Christians in an American, Republican, Democratic, or communist way. Rather, “I would want them to do the reverse, to engage with their culture in a faithfully Christian way—missionally, strategically, thoughtfully, wisely, incarnationally—so that their Christian faith would give them an alternative, Spirit-empowered way of living—whether they are in a postmodern, modern, American, Republican, Democratic, or communist setting.”9
This dialogue emphasizes the point that Christians' primary allegiance needs to be to the Lord Jesus, regardless of cultural setting. It also shows the importance of feedback, even when I thought I accurately reflected his views in both ways. I think McLaren is right that there is a difference between my two descriptions, even though when I wrote them, I thought I was just rephrasing the same idea in different words.
Still there are important issues of substance here. McLaren also has said that postmodernism has successfully deconstructed modernity's key ideas; so we ought to develop new ways of thinking about the faith. Accordingly, we should not see the truth of our faith as an abstract set of disembodied propositions, apart from their narrative context. Thus, we should change how we witness from a presentation of “abstract” laws to telling the story of Jesus. Accordingly, it seems that embracing a new way of being a Christian in postmodern times involves accepting at least some postmodern insights. If so, then to what extent is there a real difference between embracing a new way of being a Christian in postmodern times and adopting a postmodern view of being a Christian?
McLaren rephrased that question as follows: to what extent is there “a real difference between embracing a new way of being a Christian in postmodern times, and adopting a way of being a Christian that has become aware both of the distortions of modernity (I think I call them ‘modern viruses’ in one of my books) and the dangers of postmodernity”?10 To answer, McLaren referred in part to his many writings, including “the tendency in modernity to reduce the gospel from a global redeeming narrative about the coming of the kingdom of God through Christ to information (laws, steps, whatever) about how to go to heaven. Of special concern to me is the way the gospel has been compromised first by its alliance with violence (first via Constantine's empire and, more recently, via modern colonialism).”11
This segment, as well as other parts of his reply, illustrates his concern with postmodern conversation as primarily ethical and sociological and not epistemological. McLaren is not formally trained as a philosopher. Here his concern is with how particular views helped foster and sanction the use of violence in association with the gospel. Whether violence (such as in war) can ever be justified is a subject for more discussion elsewhere. But McLaren has other ethical concerns with the implications of modernity. For instance:
I am less concerned to argue for or against foundationalism than I am to ask questions like these: why did so many Christians of the modern era—who I assume were as sincere, intelligent, pious, and honest as any of us, likely more so—find it so easy to participate in colonialism, racism, slavery, environmental irresponsibility, mistreatment of women, militarism, and a careless attitude toward the poor? Why did their theologies make them concerned about scores of rather petty issues while ignoring these larger issues, or even worse, while defending the wrong side of these larger issues?12
These are very important questions, ones we often do not grapple with enough. They also help clarify McLaren's standpoint. Discussion over these kinds of ethical issues could be fruitful with McLaren and other people inclined toward the EC. Even so, there are important ethical implications of epistemologies, especially if postmoderns have successfully deconstructed modernity and if we therefore should see the faith not as a set of abstract principles but as making sense only in the context of the Christian story. That conclusion has implications for how we should live so as to witness. So I think the way forward is both-and: I encourage McLaren to examine more closely the philosophy associated with many postmoderns' thoughts, and their implications, even ethically. Additionally, I think that dialogue with EC members can help other Christians see possible blind spots they may have to ethical implications of the ways they tend to live out the faith.
I have found McLaren and others in the EC to be sincere about wanting to engage in dialogue about their views. If conversation (not a monologue) is undertaken in a spirit of graciousness, to seek under-standing of a person's point of view by first listening to, and reading carefully, what someone has to say, along with attention to the factors that have helped shape that person's outlook, conversation can be fruitful. I have found that people then are open to hear my ideas since I want to respect them as people and listen to their ideas. We can work to clarify our ideas, and actually get down to discussing important issues, in the context of a friendly dialogue that does not ignore truth. And there are important issues, including the truth of core doctrines, which we will take up in the next section.
However, there is another epistemological issue that I discussed with McLaren, namely, the criticisms Jamie Smith raised against my views. McLaren mentioned that he found Jamie's perspectives “very helpful,” and so it behooves us to turn to examine Jamie's contentions.13
Updates on the Conversation: Jamie Smith's Criticism
In both Truth as well as my essays in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, I argued that the views of McLaren, Stan Grenz, John Franke, Brad Kallenberg, and Stanley Hauerwas have important implications, especially for core doctrines.14 That is, if (1) there is no unbiased, neutral place to stand; (2) we always know truths from particular, historically contingent settings; (3) we cannot transcend the pervasive influences of language upon our views of reality, to know reality as it is; (4) “language does not represent reality, it constitutes reality” (Kallenberg);15 (5) history itself began with our ability to write it (McLaren); then it seems we make our worlds, or our reality, by how we talk in the languages of our communities. And if there is no essence to language but there are only many languages, then there are as many worlds (with their own truths) as there are languages. As Grenz and Franke write, “We do not inhabit the ‘world-in-itself’; instead, we live in a linguistic world of our own making.”16
Using that interpretation, I went on to apply this view to several core doctrines of orthodox theology, such as the nature of God, the prospects for revelation, the incarnation, and more; and in each case this view will do great violence to them. God Himself and the incarnation will be constructs of our language. We also could never access the meaning God intended when He gave special revelation in Scripture; instead, we always would be working on the “inside” of our language and be unable to know what God intended. We end up constructing the meaning of Scripture. Call this my first interpretation.
In response to my first essay in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, Jamie avers that “the very experience of the things themselves is a matter of interpretation.”17 Moreover, “that interpreting the world as creation is, I would argue, the true interpretation, does not negate its status as an interpretation or ‘conditioned seeing’ (contra ‘direct acquaintance’).”18 He then associates this belief with his understanding of the “Calvin school”: “I think that presuppositional apologetics … rejects classical apologetics because it recognizes the truth of the postfoundationalist claim that everything is interpretation.”19So a crucial difference between Jamie's and my views is that we disagree over our ability to be directly acquainted with reality.
In Truth, as well as the Postmodern Turn, I was trying to address the idea that we cannot have direct access to reality. However, in retrospect, I may have portrayed it in a way that was somewhat inaccurate. I interpreted some writers as claiming that the real world is (in itself) indeterminate and inaccessible, whereas we have constructed the world we live in by the use of our language in a particular community. In turn, Jamie argued that my criticisms are misguided because I have a “restrictive understanding of language” since both language and its users are part of the world.20 Moreover, the world we inhabit is “always already interpreted within a framework of signs or a semiotic system.”21 But these points do not entail the “kind of stilted Kantianism that Scott paints.”22
Therefore, let me offer a second, revised interpretation of what Jamie, McLaren, and several others are claiming: there is a real world, but there is no knowledge by direct acquaintance. All experience and all knowledge are interpreted. On this view we do not “construct” our worlds, but we do interpret them, and that necessarily involves our particular historical location, including (crucially) our language. Like my first interpretation, we never can achieve epistemically an “objective” (i.e., neutral, unbiased) vantage point from which we can gaze directly at and know “objective” reality (i.e., metaphysically, the world as it really is, apart from interpretations). On neither my first nor my second interpretation would McLaren, Jamie, or others deny that there is a real world that exists apart from our experiences or interpretations. But rather than constructing our world, on this second interpretation we always bring with us our interpretive “glasses” to any experience or any act of knowing such that everything (even the gospel) is an interpretation.23
Jamie is right to call attention to the focus on interpretation, and not so much epistemology, in the postmodern “turn.” And he has made clearer the nature of some of the claims I have been at pains to interpret. I think Jamie is right, for all of the authors I have been examining affirm that there is a real world, which fits better with Jamie's view that everything is interpretation.
Still, on this view I do not think we will be able to know reality. In one place Jamie considers part of Disney's The Little Mermaid movie.24 Ariel, the mermaid who wants to experience life in the human world, has seen and collected various artifacts from it. Scuttle the sea gull helps her by adding to her collection what we know as a fork, but he calls it a “dinglehopper,” which he explains is to be used to comb hair. When Ariel gets her chance to experience life in the human world, she even eats with the prince. Imagine his surprise when she starts combing her hair with her fork at the dinner table!
Jamie then explains his point:
This thing—this strangely shaped piece of metal—even when we find it sitting on the table right in front of us, is subject to interpretation. Given our horizons of expectation, our past history, what we've been told, and thus a whole host of presuppositions that we bring to the experience, we immediately see the object as a fork (and find it difficult to see it as anything but a fork). But for Ariel—with her different history, different experience, and thus different presuppositions—the item is interpreted as a dinglehopper. While it might seem as though we don't interpret the object, we actually go through the interpretive process so quickly, without even thinking about it, that it seems as if we're not engaged in interpretation. But the speed with which the object is construed as a fork does not negate the fact of interpretation or the interpretive process involved. So we never get past texts and interpretations to things “simply as they are” in any kind of unmediated fashion.25
On Jamie's view, when Ariel saw a particular metal object, she did not see the object itself, but she saw it as a dinglehopper, whereas the prince and we see it as a fork. Still, she, as well as the rest of us, sees something. But what is that “something”? Perhaps it is the metal. But on Jamie's claims, when we each experience the metal in the object, we are not experiencing it directly; instead we (each) are experiencing something else as being metal. Or perhaps we are seeing the shape. But, again, we are not experiencing it directly; instead we (each) experience something else as being a shape. The same result obtains with any quality of this object (or even that “it” is an object), such that none of us can experience or know the object or any of its qualities. Essentially, though we may rightly affirm that the real world exists, with real things and real people, it seems that in Jamie's view, we never can get to know them at all if there is no experience, or knowledge, by direct acquaintance. Anything we try to know (epistemically, or even in the sense of knowing a person in a relationship) always seems to elude our grasp.26
But that result leaves us in a poor position to know anything about the world, or even that there is a real world, or any reality in it, including ourselves. That result has serious implications for Christians and Christianity. We do not seem able to know, for example, that God has spoken to us, or that Jesus died for our sins and arose from the dead on the third day. But that situation is utterly foreign to the New Testament writers. As but one example, the apostle John wrote about several things we can know to be true, including that the Word of Life has come in the flesh (1 John 1:1—3), that Christians can have eternal life (5:3), and much more. The view that everything is interpretation cannot explain how we can (and do) know many things, and it will serve to undermine the confidence that the apostles intended for Christians to have in the truths of the faith.
Conclusion
We need to consider carefully the various problems McLaren has identified with the contemporary evangelical church. There can be forms of bondage from the influence of modernity upon Christians. But our primary need for emergence is not from modernity's influences; it is from a deeper, more pervasive kind of bondage, one that transcends times, cultures, and even languages—namely, sin. To emerge from that will require that we know the truth, so we should not embrace a view that will serve to undermine that. And knowing truth will require our holding fast to the truth in the Word of God, which is able to cut through our sin in all its many forms (Heb 4:12—13).
1 Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001).
2 Brian McLaren, More Ready Than You Realize (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 41—42.
3 McLaren, New Kind, 15.
4 Ibid., 100.
5 Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 28.
6 McLaren, New Kind, 161.
7 Unlike Cartesian foundationalism, a “modest” foundationalism is less vulnerable to skeptical charges that if we cannot be certain, we cannot have knowledge. There are precious few beliefs we may have in life that are utterly certain, that we cannot possibly (even conceivably) be mistaken, so if we maintain the Cartesian standard, we find ourselves vulnerable to the skeptical query, “Isn't it just possible that you are mistaken?” In Truth, I develop reasons we can have knowledge without certainty. Traditionally, knowledge has been understood as justified true belief. To have knowledge, I need adequate justification (reasons, or evidence, in support of a belief) for my believing it to be true. Justification can vary in degrees among beliefs, and some beliefs may have such large degrees of justification that I have no good reasons to doubt them (e.g., I think the evidence in support of Jesus' resurrection is overwhelmingly in favor of its being true). But that stance does not require that I cannot possibly (however minutely) be mistaken. See Truth, 110—21.
8 See my “Some Suggestions for Brian McLaren (and his Critics),” Criswell Theological Review (2006): 67-86.
9 Brian McLaren, in his “cordial response to R. Scott Smith,” e-mail dated 6 June 2006.
10 Brian McLaren in the second part of his “cordial response to R. Scott Smith,” e-mail dated 17 July 2006.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 See my two essays, “Christian Postmodernism and the Linguistic Turn,” and “Postmodernism and the Priority of the Language-World Relation,” in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2005).
15 Brad J. Kallenberg, Ethics as Grammar: Changing the Postmodern Subject (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 234.
16 Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 53.
17 James K. A. Smith, “Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? A Response to the ‘Biola School,’” in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos, 2005), 218.
18 Ibid. (emphasis in original).
19 Ibid. (emphasis mine).
20 Ibid., 222.
21 Ibid. (emphasis in original).
22 Ibid.
23 James K. A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 42—51.
24 Ibid., 40-42.
25 Ibid., 41—42 (emphasis in original).
26 I do not have space to develop this argument here. But I intend to argue more fully in a future manuscript, In Search of Moral Knowledge: Rethinking Ethics and the Fact-Value Dichotomy (presently unpublished).