We all walk into the classroom with ideas about how we come to know things. But, problematically, these epistemologies are often uncritically held. Over the next several minutes I want to address the epistemological foundations and resultant worldviews involved in religious studies in the contemporary, secular academic world. I’ll begin by laying out the general outline of the three most prevalent epistemologies in the academy, arguing for the superiority of the metamodern perspective (which I’ll define in a moment). I will then argue that whatever the chosen epistemological worldview, the academic benefit of critical reflection on that worldview cannot be understated. I’ll draw examples from ancient historical research, especially historical Jesus research, as these are two of the disciplines in the academic world that I enjoy most. I’m going to need definitions of modern, postmodern, metamodern, secular and secularistic.
Let me begin with “modern.” The term “modern” is applied to a dizzying number of disciplines and beliefs; arts and architecture, science and literature, religious studies and philosophy, etcetera. Again, what I’ve focused on in the current research is the term as it relates to religious studies. By “modern,” I’m here referring to enlightenment rationalism and positivism. Modern philosophy of ancient history boasts that via the scientific method, with enough research, textual criticism, good social science, and so forth, we can get down to what actually happened over 2,000 years ago in, say, Ancient Palestine. And if we can’t, then there is absolutely no point in talking about it as history. And, from the perspective of many in the other disciplines on this campus, there’s really no point in talking about it at all. This perspective is the direct result of modernism.
Although the modern use of the scientific method (hypotheses-verification/falsification) in the academy is certainly beneficial, saying that hypotheses are derived merely from empirical evidence, as a modern rationalist does, is misleading. Even the physical sciences require a great deal of imagination to come up with new hypotheses, and the limits of one’s imagination are set by one’s worldview (Wright, 37). We must be aware that we each approach research with imaginations that are limited by our varying frameworks of understanding the world (worldviews). Therefore, when we produce hypotheses about, for example, the historicity of an event in one of the Gospels, these hypotheses are heavily influenced by our worldviews.
On the opposite end of the epistemological coin is postmodernism. In a class at the University of Montana, titled “Theory and Method in the Study of Religion,” I read an essay about the study of “myth” by a renowned postmodern scholar of religion, Russell T. McCutcheon. Near the end of the essay McCutcheon quotes Paul Veyne, who affirms McCutcheon in his postmodern answer to the question of truth (what is real): “truth is the most variable of all measures. It is not a transhistorical invariant but a work of the constitutive imagination…” (McCutcheon, 201). Postmodernism sees the trouble with modern positivism but swings too wide in the other direction. Because a postmodern thinker recognizes the influence of worldview and culturally formed perceptions, he/she doesn't imagine that he/she can know anything of the actuality of the ancient past and is left reflecting on his/her own reflection--worldviews, perceptions and feelings. In studying myth as a postmodern historian we study mythmaking instead. For example, since the gospel of Luke was written by a person, let’s call him Luke for simplicity, all we can actually get from his account is information about Luke as a mythmaker and about the ways in which we write our own myths about Luke as a mythmaker and ourselves and subjective perceivers.
But there remains a flicker of hope in the recesses of academic historical research.
Metamodern research, reacts against both the circularity of postmodernism and the positivistic optimism of modernism. While maintaining the postmodern idea that perception colors everything, the metamodern historian also accepts that there are things which one can come to know about reality, ancient and modern. While being critically aware and constantly discovering more and more of one's own worldview and the worldview and societal influences of Luke, one finds that the Gospel account does in fact tell us something about a historical character named Jesus. It is an ongoing dialectic, a back-and-forth conversation, between the knower and the thing known, the worldview and the world, which is critically aware both that there are subjective influences to be discovered and critically aware of and that there is an objective reality which can be known, really, to a greater and greater degree.
This metamodern epistemology that I’m arguing for is founded on critical realism. Critical realism was first developed by Roy Bhaskar, a living British philosopher born in 1944, who began his career with a DPhil from Oxford, writing his thesis about the relevance of economic theory for under-developed countries. Through this he became interested in the philosophy of social science, then the philosophy of science. Bhaskar is now applying critical realism to peace studies. His reaction was against both modern enlightenment positivism and postmodern pessimism, much like I’ve defined them. His philosophy has been taken up by several historians in the last two decades, including today’s most prominent New Testament scholar in the academic world, both secular and confessional, N.T. Wright. For Wright, critical realism is the idea that there is in fact a knowable reality independent of the knower (hence realism), but the only access we have to this reality is along the closing spiral of appropriate conversation between the knower and the thing known (Wright, 35). This critical realism can perhaps be visualized as a type of epistemological Hegelianism, where the knower and the thing known are in dialectical conversation, moving ever closer to the most plausible story of objective reality.
So, again, we study the way perception works, and, while maintaining critical awareness of our own worldviews, we can begin crafting reasonable arguments for the historicity of accounts given in, say, the Gospel According to Luke. It is a critical dialogue between the mind and the object of knowledge, recognizing that knowledge itself is never independent of the knower, but that it does correspond to an external reality. And so a critical understanding of what’s going on in here, inside of my mind, is crucial for modestly understanding what’s going on out there.
Professor Z often says that he chose Religious Studies over philosophy because in the field of religious studies we’re dealing with actual history, whereas philosophy is often diminished to some type of trans-historical truth. Plato may or may not have been ironic when he discussed his notion of the immortality of the soul, but what is really important is the way I read it and understand it as philosophy. In religious studies, and particularly the academic study of Christianity—because it is a religion founded entirely upon the actuality of certain historical events—we can remain firmly grounded in historical research.
I hope these epistemological perspectives are clear enough.
Now for a bit of application of these ideas. I realize that people have their own perspectives from which they teach, and that they are entitled to them. Not everyone is racing to embrace metamodern critical realism. But we in the religious studies community come under a great deal of negative criticism, especially from those in other departments worrying about budget cuts. One primary criticism comes from the assumption that the academic world is secularist. Because there is a lot of confusion around the terms “secular” and secularistic, to make my argument clear I need to identify the key differences in the implications of these terms.
Calling an action or institution secular simply means that it isn’t in place for religious purposes. That is to say, when Buddhism is taught, the professor doesn’t begin with a meditation and consecration of the class in session to the Buddhist religion. I’m learning what Buddhists believe about X, Y and Z. Or, as in the case of Historical Jesus Scholarship, I’m approaching the study open to the possibility that I may have uncritical assumptions that are twisting my reading.
Secularism, on the other hand, is itself a viewpoint, often one uncritically or altogether unknowingly held. The Oxford English Dictionary defines is as, “The doctrine that morality should be based solely on regard to the well-being of mankind in the present life, to the exclusion of all considerations drawn from belief in God or a future state” (OED, 2704. Italics added for emphasis). (This is the philosophy of, for example, Richard Rorty.) Although the difference between secular and secularism might not seem so radically different at first, the former is an unassuming foundation for all types of dialogue, while the latter involves its own ethical worldview that silences the dialogue of all religious worldviews, through which a majority of the world’s population looks. A secularistic individual, then, would approach historical Jesus research having already ruled out the possible historicity of the gospel narratives, without first letting them speak for themselves. It’s like Dawkins and Hitchins saying that science is the answer to religion, when they’ve approached science from a secularistic worldview at which they arrived long before they got to the lab to do their research.
In the same way, if we approach the Bible having already decided that it is simply a collection of myths, and if we’re not critically aware of this starting point, we’ll miss the whole point of these texts and, most importantly, we’ll be unable to understand, and thus respect, the individuals who do find truth in them.
How should we then proceed? The foremost thing is that to perform well in the academic world of religious studies, students need to identify the lenses through which they gaze. The best that we can do is identify our lenses and move humbly forward with a recognition of human fallibility. In the case of historical Jesus research and biblical studies, we can’t get any closer than the most plausible scenarios; any assurance greater than plausibility necessarily falls into the category of faith, whether or not one winds up believing in the resurrection. But not all stories that are told have the same level of plausibility.
The approach I've been arguing for, is to educate students on the principles of various worldviews, so that they can participate in a respectful dialogue. To do this, they’ll need examples. I was a grader for Professor X's intro to Buddhism class last semester and it would be difficult to over-exaggerate the number of times I read a test in which the student just wrote down what he had obviously come into the class imagining Buddhism to be. Just emphasizing peace and compassion and care for the environment, but neglecting to answer the questions Professor X had put down on paper. I’m convinced that this is a direct result of uncritical reflection on preformed viewpoints.
I am arguing that it would be beneficial for every professor, at the beginning of the semester, to articulate the philosophical worldview through which the class will be taught. If we’re studying the Bhagavad-Gita or the Bible through the lens of secularistic history, having already ruled out the possibility that it refers to something true, that’s fine, because that is a worldview with which students need to learn to dialogue. But it needs to be recognized that it is neither the only nor the best option for a critically thinking individual. It needs to be presented in such a way that students learn at least that there are respectable, brilliant people, who find truth in these texts, both historical and trans historical. I’ve argued that that to prepare students to respond with thoughtful, well-articulated questions and respect must begin in our classrooms. It must begin in a classroom designed to prepare the student body for an engagement with the real world. And, again, the real world does and will always include religion.
Bibliography
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McCutcheon, Russell T. Chapter 14: "Myth." In Guide to the Study of Religion, ed. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, 190-208. New York: T&T Clark, Continuum Imprint, 2000.
Wright, N. T. The New Testament and the People of God. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992. 35, 37. Print.
