Standpoint Epistemology with Bill Roach

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Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I am very honored to have with me today a special guest

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I've been telling you for a few weeks. We're gonna have a professor Explain to us this standpoint epistemology.

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You've all heard the word if you've been listening to my podcast and I've received questions. What is this word?

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What does it mean? And I said well We're gonna have an expert on it come and speak with us and Bill Roach Thank you so much for coming on and being willing to give your time to explain this to churchmen out there

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So it's really just my honor and privilege now I do want to say I'm not sure if I'm this world -renowned expert, but I can't speak to this stuff

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Well, let me let me Tell the audience kind of a little bit of who you are You can correct the record if I get something wrong here

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But you got your PhD in philosophy from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary you pastored before that in Chicago area

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You you've written a few books most notably defending inerrancy with the late dr.

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Norm Geisler and Here's just a few things from the book which are rather impressive

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John MacArthur comments on the book and he talks about the inerrancy debate of the 1970s and 1980s and Then he says the very same issues are under debate as before and all the same tired already answered arguments have been hauled out once More against scripture.

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It is time for genuine believers to awaken to this issue again and speak with a clear united voice of confidence and conviction

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We owe a debt of a debt to Norm Geisler and Bill Roach for their willingness to stand at the front line in this renewed battle for the

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Bible and then we Have Jay our giant Packer who wrote the foreword for this? And he says in the following pages

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Norman Geisler who contributed as much as anyone to the International Council on biblical inerrancy original legacy and William Roach interact with evangelical hypotheses that Have the effect of confusing that legacy.

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They are masterly Gatekeepers and I counted an honor to commend this work to the

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Christian world. And so those are some very high recommendations coming Dork, dr.

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Norm Geisler, of course is you know, the person we think about when we think of the inerrancy battle And I notice you're also the president of the

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International Society of Christian apologetics. So there you go. You can't get away from it You have you have the authority to speak on this issue

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So thank you, you know once again, and I'm just really looking forward to diving deep here and understanding what's going on today

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So so let me ask you this First of all, I know you graduated from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary I want to get down into the weeds here

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But as you know resolution 9 is kind of been a buzzword almost I mean, it's just it's debated everywhere now in the

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Southern Baptist Convention and in resolution 9 critical race theory and intersectionality We're sort of endorsed more or less as analytical tools that you can use

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It is our aspiration in this resolution simply to say that critical race theory and intersectionality are simply

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Analytical tools that may be used as tools not as a worldview and John MacArthur Last October, I believe it was it was the same

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You know talk he gave where he said the comment about Beth Moore that that became really controversial But before he said that he talked about The fact that the

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Southern Baptist Convention adopted these tools as ways that you could analyze the Bible when the Southern Baptist met in June And they passed resolution 9 and they said intersectionality and critical theory are useful tools in interpreting the

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Bible That was a watershed moment for that entire movement because if the culture has the right to interpret the

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Bible they will interpret the Bible and Liberalism will take over This is an evidence that they are allowing the culture to interpret the scripture a couple weeks after that There was a panel discussion of Southern Baptist leaders who said there should never be another translation committee

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Without a Latino an African American and a woman on it translation of the Bible.

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How about somebody who knows Greek and Hebrew? Well, and of course resolution 9 doesn't say these are supposed to be analytical tools for the

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Bible But why not right if they're analytical tools, why not subject the Bible to these tools? Do you see a threat in that kind of language to the doctrine of inerrancy?

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I'm just curious. I Really do, you know when we look at the debates that have come about Throughout the history of evangelicalism and really just the history of Protestantism.

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It's always been the battle of what I label as Mr. Middleman or an argument from synthesis and let's just think about it coming out of the

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Reformation debates you have Luther and Calvin standing upon sola scriptura by scripture alone

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We can understand that which God requires for faith and practice We have all the divine words

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Necessary to understand those things for faith and practice and we have the means to understand those divine words that are necessary And what do we find going on within Roman Catholicism?

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They're giving us this magisterial use of tradition. That's Necessarily required in order to interpret scripture.

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It's not just a Ministerial tool. It's a Magisterial tool and the interesting thing is that when you look at the history of these debates

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Everybody seems to be bringing these types of tools that can help them interpret the

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Bible whether it be Kant's Idealism that he brought about or whether it's going to be

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Hegel's dialectic and we see how these have functioned Schleiermacher uses the tool for liberalism the dialectic brought its way into neo -orthodoxy embarking and concepts of revelation and Even tools that were brought about for things such as higher criticism as a means to understand what the text is getting at Boltman's Demythologizing or in other respects when we get into the contemporary eras now where they're starting to use various postmodern tools as Analytical concepts to understand the text of Scripture for the majority culture

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It's information in a look at the Bible that they've never thought of before and for the

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Hispanics It's the same because they've been taught to read the Bible for systematic theology or eternal principles

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But what I'm trying to show them is we are in the text

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Those are our stories I know sink on dramas

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As I said when I started stories, these are our stories That's my life.

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That's my experience And they can begin to engage the text at levels.

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Maybe some of us cannot And that's exactly what the Chicago framers tried to push back against was this idea of alien tools coming in contradiction with the premises of Scripture, but also a

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Necessary lens to interpret Scripture. So in many ways, it's a parallel You're talking about the

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Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy for those who don't know what that is Could you just explain that real quick? What is that Chicago statement because some of the listeners may not be familiar

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Well, the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy Was a a document that was produced by a whole host of main

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Evangelical scholars including R .C. Sproul who is the main framer and president of the Chicago Statement on biblical inerrancy

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You also had Norman Geisler. You had J .I. Packer. You had

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Individuals like Francis Schaeffer and a host of others Maybe even including Greg Bonson who came together because it was a watershed moment for the total truthfulness of God's Word And what they formulated was a clear understanding of what do we mean by inerrancy?

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And what do we not mean by inerrancy? And that's why there are clear affirmations and denials

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And from that a whole host of 300 scholars came together for a summit conference that met in Chicago and they had one on inerrancy one on hermeneutics and a third one on biblical application and it really just laid the groundwork and the foundation of an evangelical understanding both of Scripture, but also of Hermeneutics, how do we understand understand biblical truth and reality?

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So, you know I was reading This is one of the reason I want to have you on an article that you had written called a friendly response to I think

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It's Ryan Putnam's solo scripture and Christian charity and you it is that William Roach org for anyone who wants to go check it out

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You kind of make a distinction here between these tools So do you just brought up a whole list of tools that could be used to interpret

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Scripture and then things like logic You know the hermeneutical principles we use what because this is the pushback we get is well you use logic

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So why not use critical race theory? What do you say to that? Well, I think what we find is that you know

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Critical race theory is a tool and Logic is a tool but they don't function in the exact same way as we find in a house

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You have different aspects of a house that we can all label as part of the house

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But there's a difference between the foundation and the walls and the roof if you take the roof off of a house

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Well, you still have other things that are standing you rip the foundation out Well, you've lost your grounds for justifying anything.

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So, you know when I read that article I thought what was happening was an equivocation of tools that we were trying to in many ways

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Confuse the different categories and ways that tools could operate and as we know

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There are in critical race theory. It considers itself a tool, but it's not always a tool for construction, but it's been used as a tool for Destruction my

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Psychosocial development was inculcated in the water of white supremacy. That is what

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I call this system. I don't mean the KKK I mean a system in which whiteness and white people are central and Seen as inherently superior than to people of color

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My personality was formed in that water. My worldview was formed in that water. I didn't choose it.

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It isn't my fault I'm not racked with guilt about it But I am responsible for changing it because the default of our society is the reproduction of racism

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It's built into every system and every institution And if we just live our lives and carry on in the most comfortable ways for us, we will necessarily

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Reproduce it there is no neutral space Inaction is a form of action

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So what I'm arguing is is that there are basic tools that are pertinent to the very fabric of humanity

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And these are things such as the laws of logic and the nature of propositional language now just think about this if you take away

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Critical theory you still have the laws of logic and propositional language If you take away propositional language and the laws of logic you have no way to actually identify

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What critical theory is nor any other means to communicate what critical theory is so in many ways

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You can have one without the other but if you take away the realistic understandings of the the basic categories of reason and Language, you can't have critical theory or any other theory

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One is based off the very fabric of metaphysical reality The other is not to put it in my own words, and I want to see if you think this is correct

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The laws of logic would be just fundamental to existence they flow from the nature of God In fact without the

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Triune God of Scripture, we don't have laws of logic. That's Foundational but something like critical race theories.

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This is not a foundational thing that we can't escape. That's fundamental to reality This is a synthesized artificial man -made construction

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Overlaying reality and it's a lens by which you look at everything through am I getting that right? Exactly when you look at the the idea of the laws of logic

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They're telling us fundamentally about categories of being how things exist well, we know that nothing can be the cause of its own existence nothing can be a self cause and Historically Christians have argued that the laws of logic are based off of the very nature of God himself

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God is that which exists and he exists necessarily and in that way logic also

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Functions in that way. It has immutable almost Eternal in material aspects that can't be accounted for based off of the material world

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But they can be accounted for based off of the nature of God himself now

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Christians have also made a distinction between what are known as first intention reasonings and Second intention reasonings first intention reasonings are things like the laws of logic based off of the very nature of reality itself

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Second intention reasonings can be things that we think about those first principles and that's where we develop all different types of hypotheses we cannot

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Fundamentally have a consistent evangelical theology and do away with these first principles

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Whereas we can be wrong in second principles and that's the issue is that many people are trying to smuggle

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Critical analytical tools into these first principle realms when really their second intentions

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There are things that are based off of other things now what we would argue is that they actually are in contradiction with one another

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But hypotheses don't function the same way as first principles So that's a fundamental point that I'm trying to make with people when they're using this concept of analytical tool.

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That's excellent Could you maybe bring the layman that listened to this up to speed? I know this these are sort of complicated sounding ideas, but How did we get to the point that folks are in right now in the

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Southern Baptist Convention? I know you went to Southeastern. So you're probably familiar with some of this Just historically, you know, how do we go from let's say, you know

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Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy where they're fighting even liberation theologies that are using similar ideas

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To now critical race theory can be used as a tool and you know, whatever culture you're in That's that's your lens by which you look at through reality.

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Just walk us through that You know when we back up and we look at different aspects of how we engage ideas and culture

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Francis Schaeffer always kind of talked about how evangelicals are say 30 years late to this debate

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So this conversation that's taking place within broader evangelicalism or even within the

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Southern Baptist Convention is part of a much larger conversation that's been taking place in culture for decades now and What they're trying to do is they're trying to really interact with the main ideas of modernity

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How do we do we either accommodate or do we resist them? And that's really what the

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Chicago statement was trying to do was they were trying to push back against these ideas Because they were seeing them encroached with an evangelical seminaries and they knew we didn't get ahead of it

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We were going to fall prey to these ideas and that's exactly what the conservative resurgence was is that the ideas of theological modernity were coming into the

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Southern Baptist Convention and people rallied upon the Bible and the Bible alone being that which is totally true and Sufficient for doctrine and life and that's where we're finding ourselves right now in the

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Southern Baptist Convention But also within broader evangelicalism is the Bible and the

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Bible alone sufficient for faith and practice So here's the confusing part. I think for some pastors and laymen out there you have guys who?

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Like think resolution 9 was great and teach sort of and I know we haven't really gotten to standpoint epistemology

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Yet but but but they're forwarding ideas that layman just think something that isn't right about this

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But yet what what will happen is they say well, hold on at our institution. We sign the Baptist faith and message we believe in inerrancy here and there's it's a confusing kind of disconnect because Some layman

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I think aren't they don't know what to do with that. I said, well something's wrong. But yeah, okay Yeah, you did sign the faith statement

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So post modernists know how to sign a faith statement maybe and then undermine it.

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Could you explain that maybe? Well, just think about this. This isn't just something that could go on at any institution, you know that is distant and remote from a broader conversation that's taken place within Evangelicalism, you know during the time of the inerrancy debates

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We ran into a similar thing that happened within the evangelical theological society And in particular

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I'm thinking about a few individuals The first one that comes to mind is the Robert Gundry case for those of you who aren't familiar with Robert Gundry He was using what was known as midrash as a method of interpreting the

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Bible again an outside Category in order to interpret the Bible and from that he was saying we can take historical narratives and just turn them into these fictional stories and He used that method throughout the

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Gospel of Matthew to Dehistoricize much of the text of Scripture and yet on the very next day

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He could also signed the ETS statement that affirms that the Bible and the Bible alone is the

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Word of God so a debate ensued within evangelical theological society about Consistency in many ways we have these two rivaling

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Siblings that were coming about you have what an individual claims in their

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Doctrinal statement and the way their theology is functioning. So individuals such as Roger Nicole and Norman Geisler Responded to this arguing that if that be the case if we just take somebody's mere affirmation of the text of Scripture Then we can turn the

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Bible into a wax nose. We can do with it. Whatever we want unless we call them to Consistency there has to be an argument made that there are not only doctrinal essentials but methodological essentials and By God's providence what happened was is that the vast majority of people in the evangelical theological society?

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Voted to remove gungery because they saw that not all interpretations of the text of Scripture not all theologies from outside analytical perspectives can be

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Reconciled with a high view of Scripture The second time where we see this was in the evangelical theological

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Society came with Clark Pinnock Clark Pinnock was an open theist He used these concepts to interpret the text of Scripture and to deny that God had exhaustive foreknowledge of the future

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God can't know future events and One of the interesting points is that he would actually sign the

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ETS statement However, this was coming from my mentor.

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Dr. Norman Geisler when he signed the statement He said that he signed it in pencil.

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He wouldn't sign it in ink but again, they pressed on him and said You have sibling rivalries you affirm this doctrinal statement this view of God This view of the

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Bible but yet you gut it in the way that you interpret the text of Scripture And my fear is is that that's what's going on in other areas is that somebody can give clear lip service to a doctrinal statement

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But yet it lives in sibling rivalry Based off of the way, they're actually interpreting the text of Scripture and the ideas that they're bringing to the text itself

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So they're inconsistent very consistent, you know, it's interesting you brought up Clark Pinnock And this is maybe a little bit of a rabbit trail

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But I've been doing some research on the evangelical social justice movement of the early 70s and Clark Pinnock Was Jim Wallace's mentor

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Jim Wallace being kind of the main recognizable figure of evangelical progressivism

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I find that fascinating that you just brought him up in this, you know, what else is interesting about Clark Pinnock?

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what's that Pinnock was also one of the key individuals that brought about a Robust understanding of the inerrancy of Scripture within the

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Southern Baptist Convention He was a professor at New Orleans Seminary back in the day and trained many of the key architects of the convention

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But what changed? Philosophy changed his theology changed

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He started to go from having Scripture as the infallible and errant sufficient Word of God to now we need to have

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Outside analytical tools to help us interpret these passages of Scripture Wow does have consequences now

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Bill you are you're incredibly intelligent on these things, but a lot of the layman out there who are gonna be

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Dealing with this in their own church. They don't always know how to recognize it These errors when they come in and then open their

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Bibles and refute them. Could you give some advice that's Accessible advice for layman.

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Well think about it like this Let's use a simple illustration to see the self -defeating nature of what these theories are bringing again

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And let's use this if I came up to you and I said something like this John I can't speak a word in English.

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What would we naturally think of when we hear that comment? Well, you just said that in English It's a self -defeating concept

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So what happens is is that you have these guys that are coming in and they're affirming that the

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Bible is totally true but yet On a different Avenue, they're going to say things but yet we can't have objectivity.

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Well, is that an objective? interpretation about reality

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To claim that you can't have an objective interpretation of reality or you can't have clear propositions about reality or Objective interpretations and clear propositions about reality.

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They're self -defeating They're just like saying I can't speak a word in English while saying it in English and that's what we're finding is people are coming in and They're starting to say all

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Truth claims can be relative Well, is that a relative truth claim or is it an objective truth claim?

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If it's relative then you can just disregard it as relative if it's not a relative truth claim

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Well, then it contradicts what you just said and we can have objective truth claim

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So which one is it the sibling rivalry again? That's excellent. Could you speak to standpoint epistemology?

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What is it? Where did it come from? And how is that specific incarnation of this undermining of inerrancy?

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recognizable standpoint epistemology is a view of epistemology that's arguing that we can only understand reality from our different avenues of Understanding what the the world is made up to be so we can also argue like this giving a more

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Robust understanding is that it says there is no sensible conception of the world independent of human

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Interpretation. So think about it. There's no objective sensible understanding of reality

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Everything is a way of human interpretation The lack of objectivity of the presence of all kinds of White elite male

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Class and race values that were shaping what counted as research what counted as good research

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So where does that idea come from? And what we look at is is that we find in the history of ideas

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That we can in many ways divide the world pre -Kant and post -Kant and this is

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Immanuel Kant the great German philosopher and his Copernican revolution that took place in the history of ideas now

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We understand what the Copernican Revolution was talking about does the earth Revolve around the

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Sun or is the Sun revolve around the world now in the history of ideas

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That analogy has been applied to epistemology, which is how do we come to know things?

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How do we come to know reality and it's this does reality conform unto the mind or does the mind conform unto

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Reality. So which one is it you objects? Come into my mind and I am

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Discovering truth or does my mind in many ways? Manufacture reality and I'm determining that which is true.

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Does that make sense initially on this that this basic aspect here? Yes. Yes, it does So that's why we're using this idea is that they're living in a post

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Kantian world there is no Objective reality that we can come to know

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We can come to discover But it's a myriad of ways of how we can determine reality and this is what's known in the history of ideas as Kant's critical

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Philosophy the critical here is not he's being mean or he's being abusive or judgmental.

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It's Coming from the idea of Kant's way to sort out to be critical to sort out

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Reality from various paradigms and various ideals in which we approach reality and that's ultimately what the grandfather of the movement is and The late grandchildren of the movement is standpoint epistemology because how do

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I sort it out? by by various racial perspectives gender perspectives my sexuality perspectives by different historical perspectives every time a new group

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Steps on the stage of history it tends to say something like gee whiz

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From the perspective of our lives things look different So you can see the civil rights movement saying that you can see the poor people's movements

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You can see post -colonial and decolonial movements saying that lesbian gay bi trans so standpoint methodology and theory is a kind of organic

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Logic of research. That's it in a nutshell. That's how we're getting here. It's a post Kantian epistemology

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Applied radically to these individual paradigms of race gender feminists and so forth

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Wow So I'm just putting some pieces together here when you hear someone

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Let's say a democratic debate or something like that Saying, you know, there's a woman's perspective or the black experience perspective or you know

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Whatever social group they want to bring up and they say well there's this perspective on reality. Is that what they're getting at?

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When you're white you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto You don't know what it's like to be poor

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You don't know what it's like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car

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Look, I know what it's like to grow up And not be white in this country But I have no idea what it's like to grow up and be black in this country because that's a whole not a set of experiences

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I'm going to be talking to white people I think we're the ones who have to start listening to the legitimate cries that are coming from our

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African -american fellow citizens in many ways what they're getting at is that they're getting into the post

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Kantian aspect of Reality is all known from vantage points from the human going to the world from their pre -understandings and their four structures to not only just know reality, but sometimes

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Determine reality. That's where these godfathers of the movement are coming from and that's what

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Kant's categories are We go out and from the categories of the mind We are

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Structuring reality. That's why he says this. This is the key point with fun You don't know the object in reality as it exists in and of itself

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But only as it appears on to you Well, what kind of structures can we affect in that that phrase of the you?

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feminist perspectives of you racial perspectives of you Historical perspectives of you so you don't know reality in and of itself

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But as it appears on to you and that multifaceted fashion There were some lenses put over my eyes in in which

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I saw the world through those lenses I'm not knowing what those lenses are and and so if I could kind of just be straight at what

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I'm talking about is is that I I have grown up with this invisible kind of bag of Privilege I think some light bulbs might be going on for people who are listening out there because You know,

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I I know I'm thinking now of all the times that I've heard people try to use social groups to as as these

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Justifiable perspectives that may not be questioned Even from people in those groups for instance if you're a

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Clarence Thomas or a Thomas Sowell and you you know kind of buck the trend of your

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You know black community so forth and so on you you are not really accepted in the community anymore because you see things differently

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And so it almost seems like there's this understanding of truth that comes from your perspective

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Which is shaped by your environment and the power structure the the kind of the influence the privilege that you have growing up and and living in a certain environment, is that fair to say that its environment and Kind of this

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Experience over objectivity. That's what it sounds like really what it is is that it's a debate of objectivity versus Subjectivity.

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It's a debate of whether or not reality can be known or whether or not knowledge is something and here's the phrase a sociology of knowledge

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Sociology of knowledge is this idea that knowledge is community based and community

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Determinant Because from that basis, that's the perspective.

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That's the the way in which we Determine reality from our different ideas as Kant says we don't know reality in and of itself

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But only as we perceive it to be and it's from these various sociological groups that we get to So here's some things

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I've heard in Christian circles from seminaries You need to rid yourself of white privilege before approaching the text of Scripture you need to read

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Scripture especially perhaps the minor prophets from either, you know, the books of the captivity, especially from the

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Perspective of the oppressed which means modern social oppressed groups Imagine if you will a community gathered a small community of about a dozen people gathered with a priest to study the

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Bible together Some in the community are illiterate. They can't even read the words, but need to have them read to them

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They form a community perhaps of Harvest workers of coffee sugar and yet they have come to discover within those pages something that speaks to them something that addresses their situation they turn to the

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New Testament Gospels and Perhaps they read a passage from the end of the Gospels where Jesus is having his

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Last Supper with his circle of disciples and They read about how

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Jesus After that Last Supper in the middle of the night is preyed upon by Roman soldiers taken whipped and beaten all night and in the following morning is

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Executed and as this small community reads these passages a woman says

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Yes Yes, I know this This happened to my husband

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Or another one my time and this happened to my father The notion of having a meal of being dragged by soldiers out of one's house in the middle of the night facing abuse and execution the following day these were the horrible and yet powerful experiences that many brought to their interpretation of the

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Bible and Because they drew upon such powerful experiences They offer not just to their own communities, but really to all of us new and Riveting interpretations of biblical passages and implications that perhaps we have not thought of before This is one of the significant contributions of liberation theology the way that because its

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Interpretation because the readings of the Bible are rooted in powerful historical experiences

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It sheds new light on our understanding Sarah Sandra van obstacle is a good example of that.

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She said she she studied Hebrew She for 10 years studied the book of Amos But she didn't really understand it till she studied it with some prisoners who didn't know biblical interpretation because they gave her the lens

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By which she was able to finally understand the text of Scripture After a decade of studying

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Amos with college students. I finally got to go to seminary and study in Hebrew It was very expensive

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And very time -consuming, thank you, dr. McGarry and After I had the opportunity to do that.

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I said, you know what? Let me study this book of Amos Let me understand the words of the prophet Amos not from a place of power and privilege

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But from a place that is most acquainted with the injustices immigrant neighbors youth on the west side women of color and primarily white institutions

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Men who are incarcerated who have spent most of their lives behind bars because of something they did when they were 16 and 17 and were tried as Adults and so I've had the opportunity to spend time in the book of Amos at Stateville prison in Illinois and We've had a great time in the book together and one brother in particular helped me understand that Amos was a caregiver

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As we were studying the passage he said to me, you know what I don't think brother Amos is trying to be aggressive Sandra I don't think brother

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Amos is just angry brother. Amos is like my abuela You know,

35:58

I grew up in the streets Sandra. I said yes, I know And my abuela was always telling me stay inside stay inside stay inside stay inside Don't go with those people don't go to that place and I thought she was just trying to steal all my fun

36:12

I thought she was just riding me to give me a hard time But now I understood that my abuela my grandmother she longs for me to live and so she was

36:25

Giving me an opportunity and inviting me to do what is right to live and So I as we studied this book with these brothers,

36:39

I really began to see Amos very differently I'm hearing these things and they sound an awful lot like what you're talking about with this post

36:47

Kantian Understanding is can you speak to that? The interesting thing is is that when you you hear people saying these kinds of things

36:57

But it's necessarily self -defeating because what are they ultimately arguing there are no universal principles that can exist between two different Sociological knowledge groups so meaning this knowledge group has their perspective this knowledge group has their

37:17

Perspective and in many ways we can't adjudicate knowledge claims the inability to but what are they doing?

37:24

They're saying You can necessarily interpret the text of scripture and get it right from my perspective

37:32

But in the next room, they're going to say you can't take your perspectives off.

37:37

You're locked into it You are bound and you're determined by it. So which one is it? can

37:43

I take it off to read it that way or can I not take it off and I'm Necessarily bound to reading it my way

37:51

Indefinitely and that's one of the issues we find is that it's self -defeating the claim that we cannot view

37:58

Objective reality in some way fashion or form. So here here's a water bottle.

38:03

I haven't opened it It's got water in it. And if y 'all if you guys could get a close -up of that water bottle

38:09

So everybody can see it'll ever campus. Okay. So what I mean, let's say there we go All right. So what what do you see on that?

38:16

What do what word do you see? Ozarka they want to see that Okay, I don't see that.

38:25

I don't see the word. Ozarka is not on this side. I see the words born naturally and I see some words that are too small to read.

38:38

Okay, but we're looking at the same bottle, right? They won't write but I'll never see what you see

38:48

Unless I take the time to walk around the bottle and Look at it from your perspective

38:54

Are you follow you following me? So we have a problem in our country mainly because White people don't understand

39:14

It's really true and We need to take the time to walk around the issue and See what our brothers and sisters are seeing and see what they're feeling

39:27

But we'll never know unless we ask instead of simply arguing About a protest or a demonstration or something like that.

39:35

Why don't we sit down and say what do you what are you hearing? What are you saying? What do you feel? It seems arbitrary too because you're kind of stepping outside of these social groups to pick and choose and say

39:47

This is the one that you need to read the text of Scripture from not not the white privilege guys over there

39:54

You need to read it from this feminine perspective Which means that you're

39:59

I don't know I guess somehow you're Transcending the social group that you're part of even to make that statement

40:06

Exactly that's that's the contradiction of it. Okay, you you necessarily Say that you cannot transcend your particular

40:16

Sociological group, but by doing that they're making transcendent knowledge claims about other

40:23

Sociological groups think about it. I can't know that group, but I know That they don't know this particular approach to the text of Scripture That's self -defeating

40:34

Wow, you're making knowledge claims about that group all while saying you can't know things about other knowledge groups so you're a professor of philosophy you've written with Norm Geisler and You've just I think destroyed standpoint epistemology

40:55

I Just I'm curious though these these other folks who have

41:00

PhDs as well who are teaching Why do they adopt such an I'm gonna just say it's stupid idea.

41:06

Well, how did we get to this point? In the current state of affairs where you can't even question it standpoint theory

41:14

Is usually thought of as having a very particular historical lineage and it does

41:21

Marx asked the question, what can we learn about? How the class system works by starting off from workers lives rather than starting off from the lives of the elites of the day and 100 and something years later feminists picked this up and transformed it it it does have a source in 19th century and earlier

41:49

European philosophy But the feminist standpoint was specifically developed as I indicated earlier as a result of the research being

41:59

Done out of the politics of the women's movement well I think what it is is that the the post

42:05

Kantian epistemology is commonplace within Evangelical hermeneutics today, you know, let's just track the big history of this and lay out what they're claiming and we'll see that the difference from embracing this ideology is one of degree from Evangelical hermeneutics not of kind today

42:27

So we understand the big movers and shakers of this you have a monumental Kant and his critical philosophy that necessarily says that we are categorizing reality

42:36

We're manufacturing reality and people started to push back against that Individuals within German philosophy said well, why are

42:46

Kant's categories the only ways that we can know reality? So people started to say things like well, can morality be a particular perspective to know reality?

42:56

What about? Aesthetics or religious experience these different ways where they're trying to broaden the ways that we can manufacture

43:04

Reality and that's what the debate between German idealists were where these how can we still give

43:10

Kant's big paradigm but yet not be restricted to his his hard categories that we know.

43:16

Let's broaden them Let's make them gentler softer nicer as we look at the history of philosophy

43:23

People embrace these different ideas and probably the next big figure that we saw that used this framework was an individual in Particular named

43:34

Heidegger who has a big fancy philosophical system known as phenomenology And here's some of the basic differences so that we can understand this

43:43

Traditional realist philosophy says something like this to be is

43:49

To do so what I am Necessarily determines what

43:54

I do and what I am Determines how I can know things and we can think of clear examples by this you see a dog

44:04

They're going to do dog things their actions are going to flow from that particular nature

44:10

And because they're dogs we know that there's certain things that they they know and they interact with but we know that there's a difference between a dog and a human being a human beings nature gives them particular human activities in particular their rational thinking

44:28

Beings and they know reality by knowing Universals whereas animals only know since particular so it functions not only in how we exist

44:38

What we can do but also and what we can know well Phenomenology and existentialism flip this whole idea on its head if Realism says to be is to do

44:53

Existentialism argues to do is to be my actions

45:01

Determine my nature So what are things that can determine my nature what kind of actions

45:09

Necessarily exist in determining my my nature Well, we can think of it as applied to different aspects.

45:16

We've been talking about my race my historical situation by LGBTQ perspectives and that's what we find is that existentialism is

45:30

This whole idea if it's a philosophy of existence things don't have static natures they have natures that are ever being changed and almost ever evolving because your nature is ultimately the culmination of all of your actions throughout the totality of your life which

45:51

Determine your nature in the final act which is death itself So what happens is is that a lot of people say well,

45:58

I don't believe that But then in the next breath, they're quoting guys like Heidegger They're quoting guys like Gadamer in the middle of the 20th century the

46:09

German theorist Hans Georg Gadamer spoke about different locations of readers in their quest to find meaning in texts

46:21

He spoke about a location behind a text how

46:27

Especially in the early modern period Interpretation was occupied with entering into the mind of the author of a particular work and Trying to decipher

46:39

What did that author mean? What did that author intend to say?

46:45

Obviously to speak about Interpretation is to look at what Gadamer calls in the text.

46:53

That is Interpretation reflecting on the words that are used employing critical literary methods to try to uncover

47:06

What the text itself reveals? What is the form of a particular text and yet?

47:14

still again We cannot remain at the level simply behind the text or inside of a text when one interprets a text as Powerfully important as the scriptures as the

47:30

Bible has been to generations of believers One must go in front of the text

47:40

The strange phrase in front of the text But if one thinks about being in the text as the actual words of a text

47:48

If one thinks being behind the text is the author's world and context One can also begin to reflect on how the reader

47:58

Comes to the text how each of us when we pick up anything that we read or any media we might consume bring a world of experiences both personal biographical kinds of details

48:13

But also larger historical ones our culture our time our place in history these all affect how meaning is made from texts and They're crucially important when thinking about how texts get interpreted

48:32

Over time as the Bible has I mean go pick up any commonplace

48:39

Evangelical hermeneutics book and you're gonna see phrases such as the hermeneutical spiral

48:45

Well, what's the spiral my nature and objective reality are both?

48:51

coming together in some fusion of horizons of knowledge points and Existence points and I know this is heady language, but this is what the arguments saying but ultimately they're getting us back to this idea of We don't have an objective nature you don't know reality in and of itself

49:11

I the determined individual and determining reality from my historical situation from my ontological situation and then ultimately we get into this from my linguistic perspective deconstructionism because in from the history of philosophy

49:28

You no longer have authors. You only have readers and within deconstructionism to read a text

49:35

Is to necessarily Change a text. Well, what's changing it?

49:42

I am Well, what if I read my Bible on Monday? Well, that's one necessarily reading or reading of the text.

49:50

What what if I read it on Wednesday? Well, I've had different life experiences from Monday to Wednesday.

49:55

So I'm Necessarily reading the text and a different way on Monday Tuesday Wednesday Any day why because my nature is not fixed and reality is subjectively determined That's a big picture of it

50:11

Wow That is a lot to take and I was excellent You know, I'm remembering something that I was

50:17

I think Pete Buddha G If I'm saying his name, right tweeted out the other day about mass shootings and he was saying how

50:28

Someone who survived a mass shooting Had I guess contributed to some legislation and how the survival of this person in a mass shooting

50:37

You know that that's kind of one of the reasons that she should be behind authoring this legislation because her experience

50:44

Helped her, you know, I guess come to the best solution for this and you know I thought back to I don't know if you've been in one of these

50:51

Bible studies where you sit around the room and I mean, this is popular and like I feel like the early 2000s in the 90s, especially you sit around the room and everyone just reads a passage and you all say what you feel about the passage and so you bring whatever experience that you have and Especially if you have an experience that corresponds with whatever passage it is

51:12

I mean you have more authority because you know, hey, I I was I was once abused and look

51:18

This is a story of you know, the Israelites being freed from slavery or something And so, you know your perspective is kind of wow, you know

51:24

You know interesting nuanced way of looking at this and have you been in those rooms? You know what I'm talking about, right? Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about Everybody comes together and what does the text mean to you and everybody talks about how they feel about it?

51:38

So I was reading my Bible this week and I came across a passage that moved me. It was in Ezekiel Son of man set your face against Gog of the land of Magog Because there's sometimes in life we have to set our faces against against the gods that hinder us so we can love

52:01

You know, cuz I want a family and kids I I have I have a niece actually She's so cute.

52:06

Her name's Kimberly and you got a look at my Facebook. There's a picture of me with her She giggled for the first time this week.

52:12

It's so cute and they're different life experiences that somehow Can correspond to the

52:18

David experiences of your life and difference, right? How do we summarize all those what what is that necessarily?

52:25

It's a reader response theory Hmm from the vantage point of the reader

52:32

I somehow have special privilege knowledge to determine what the text not only says but what it means

52:39

So I think the answer might be obvious, but how did we get from that? to where we are now where we arbitrarily choose certain perspectives over others

52:50

For instance Beth Moore says I just need to diversify my library because man there's too many white authors in my theological library and Curtis Woods, I know has been recorded as saying

53:04

He was giving advice to a young man and he said for every one book by an Anglo You need to read two books by a non

53:11

Anglo for every one book that you read by an Anglo. I Need you to read two books by a non

53:19

Anglo So this is an arbitrary choosing of these perspectives are are good these perspectives.

53:24

It's not so good How did we get here from that weird Bible study reader response model?

53:33

well during that same time we were falling prey to the spirit of the philosophical age

53:40

Namely, that's what postmodernism ultimately teaches. How did we get from that to this?

53:46

The age hasn't changed just what they think you need to bring to the table has changed

53:51

That's how we're ultimately getting there. Is that this whole critical race theory is applied postmodernism what i've been explaining to you and the whole history of this is subjectivity and radical subjectivity

54:07

Is applied postmodernism and it's funny because evangelicals pushed back against those categories whether it was in the emergent church

54:15

Or whether it was with individuals with an ETS where we found guys pushing these ideas

54:23

But now we're finding that they're being reintroduced not through just subjectivity in the emergent church

54:29

But because race is the conversation of the day turn on CNN turn on MSNBC You know, they have said it like this in order to understand

54:43

Different area cultures I put it in this perspective To understand the south you need to understand its traditions to understand california

54:52

You need to understand that which is trending and I think today in order to understand Evangelicalism you got to combine them both you got to understand its traditions

55:01

And you got to understand that which is trending. Where did we come from in denominations and also what's trending?

55:07

Well, where are we getting this? Is it from our traditional understandings within evangelicalism know every classic evangelical from the

55:17

Westminster tradition all the way up to today Rejected this epistemology.

55:22

It's because we're following that which is trending. That's what's going on today

55:28

So we were kind of ripe for the picking in a way because we already

55:33

Kind of on a pop level adopted this reader response and then when it became politically cool to get woke that just kind of fit in with what we were already doing and It gave us what we have now.

55:46

That's what I'm here I think what it is is that we adopted the epistemology of subjectivity for decades within some

55:54

Evangelical schools how because we embraced this Kantian Heideggerian Gadamer or Gadamer's whole approach hermeneutical spirals and we gave up objectivity in Biblical interpretation we jettisoned it for subjectivity and look at many of the texts that are out there

56:15

We have whole commentary series titled the two horizons Well two horizons of what where you stand in reality and how the text stands in reality and how you got to use those two horizons aka thesis antithesis synthesis

56:33

What does that sound like? Hegel's dialectical process and we see this applied in a whole myriad of ways in Evangelical hermeneutics and it was just a difference of degree to say well we accept all of these starting points

56:47

Why not that starting point? It was just that the logical extension now That's how we can get to it

56:55

Maybe from the history of ideas. Obviously, it's not a silver bullet We get from here to there because there are a lot of inconsistencies.

57:03

I think within evangelicalism Votibachum Discusses this that a lot of people ultimately embraced this idea because they wanted to be sympathetic to other people within their congregation and They were told this is how you have to be sympathetic

57:22

Namely you got to look at it from their levels of oppression and how society might be structured against them and I go

57:30

Well, is that the way that the Bible tells us to be sympathetic with people who have experienced suffering?

57:37

I don't see anything in the Bible that says you have to necessarily read somebody through the lens of their woke

57:45

Intersectionalities and oppression I see the Bible calling us to have Objective biblical compassion on people that have experienced wrongs

57:53

It doesn't necessarily say buy into alien philosophies and alien ethics and alien ways of adjudicating

58:00

Ways that if people been wrong, so there are a myriad of reasons why we got to it one

58:07

Philosophically and others I think we just fell prey for a misplaced Understanding of what compassion looks like in the present day

58:15

Now bill you already have addressed this a little bit But I'm thinking for the layman who wants to approach his pastor now perhaps and say man

58:23

You know, my pastor said something like that the pushback they're gonna get is well Have you walked in the shoes of an oppressed?

58:31

I mean, I know you pastored in Chicago, right? So you probably have some experience maybe with with folks at a

58:37

I think originally you're from Iowa, right? Correct went to Chicago. So you know some maybe urban experiences there that you weren't familiar with You know, have you walked in those shoes bill?

58:47

What gives you the right to? Interpret the Bible for them or I don't know to assume that your experience is so much

58:55

I mean, I'm already buying into the philosophy when I start saying that but that's the pushback layman are gonna get you know

59:01

What gives you the right to assume your experience is better? What what do you say to that? Well, I think what it is is that yeah,

59:08

I do have an experience from this. I I pastored I was on staff with a few other people in a church in Chicago in Cabrini green and for those of you who aren't aware of Cabrini green is one of the most notorious gang projects that went from about the 1970s into the 2000s.

59:26

It was this west of where Moody Bible Institute was located and The community was up in arms with different strifes and perspectives, you know, what was interesting is is that You know as you're ministering.

59:41

Yes, you are experiencing the reality of what's going on with people there, but I Don't necessarily want to fall prey to sort of this

59:53

Argument that says unless you've walked in somebody's shoes. I can't necessarily

59:59

Tell you what to do or have a clear understanding of reality because here's the whole point when

01:00:07

People are telling you that they haven't walked in your shoes They haven't walked in your experience, but somehow they're telling you something about your experience

01:00:19

That's not only clear an objective, but they think that their new Paradigm that they're bringing to that situation is

01:00:26

Necessarily better Do we see the situation there? You can't ever speak into somebody's experience unless you've walked it all the time while they haven't walked it

01:00:37

You can't tell somebody one situation is better than another situation

01:00:42

Well, would I be better off by embracing your view versus the view that I currently have?

01:00:49

Is that a better situation versus another situation? So again, we're smuggling these contradictory ideas into epistemology all based off of sort of Arguments from pity

01:01:02

Which is a category that we've used to say look at this situation. Don't you feel bad for them?

01:01:08

Therefore adopt this whole worldview. I think it's self -defeating. Ultimately. It's a it's a fallacious form of reasoning

01:01:14

Yeah, that's really good What you just said about arguments from pity that it seems like there's an emotional hook

01:01:20

That kind of brings you in and then you don't you don't realize you're adopting a horrible philosophy

01:01:26

That will just is acid on hermeneutics and objective reality

01:01:32

But you you're doing it kind of not knowing because you you want to have compassion or empathy I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault.

01:01:40

Don't let anyone silence your voice You have a right to be heard and you have a right to be believed

01:01:49

We're with you Do we have to believe all the women that was the question? I posed before I'd like to believe all the women like to but I do you have to I think we should women have been trying to say these things have been happening to us and and and they're the

01:02:05

Spiritual manipulation and we've got to protect the church. You don't want to Destroy the church just think what this would do to the man of God and listening to the voices of Survivors of those who have ministered to and worked with survivors.

01:02:20

You're not being a true Christian Unless you just kind of accept as truth someone who's oppressed whatever they're telling you and and you show them empathy and hospitality, etc, and So that's that's really good bill.

01:02:34

What other advice do you have you have anything else you want to say? To layman out there You know that floor is yours.

01:02:42

I Think when we look at this and when the the battles rage on any situation and believe me

01:02:49

We are in a battle for the nature of objective truth here and we got to think about this

01:02:55

Compassion makes a really good platform for Rightly ministering to a person but compassion is not a good category for epistemology

01:03:07

And we can't swap those categories that are there We've got to really see that we can't allow these arguments from pity to determine an entire metaphysic

01:03:18

Epistemology worldview interpretation of the text of scripture. We can't stop at that point

01:03:24

We've got to really just press for an objectivity. So what I'm really arguing for is just don't let compassion determine orthodoxy

01:03:32

Don't let fraternity Determine orthodoxy. These are good guys.

01:03:38

These are good friends. I trust them Don't let that say from that.

01:03:44

I'm determining their orthodoxy. Let the Bible determine your orthodoxy Don't let fraternity determine orthodoxy.

01:03:52

Don't let sincerity Determine orthodoxy don't let the motive of good intentions determine

01:03:59

Orthodoxy let the Bible in the Bible alone determine Orthodoxy because all those other reasons can in many ways be used as a cover -up for I don't want to say ill motives, but a cover -up for a poor epistemology that we do not want to adopt

01:04:19

That is excellent. I know you're gonna be speaking soon at a conference Can you just plug that for us for those who might want to come hear you and others speak about this?

01:04:28

So what we're doing is is we're hosting a conference in Chicago with the International Society of Christian Apologetics And we're partnering with the group evangelical ministries to new religions and we're inviting in five plenary speakers

01:04:44

Four of them are going to speak specifically on critical race theory One of those is

01:04:50

Tom Askell who's coming to speak at our conference in Chicago I will be speaking and that we're going to have two pastors

01:04:58

Who are going to address the issue from that area in particular? we're going to look at it from how should the black church engage with these ideas and How should they respond to these arguments that are brought into their congregations?

01:05:14

And then we have another speaker that's going to deal with another topic that's affecting evangelicalism name with this whole

01:05:20

Enneagram and this sort of New age way of coming to know yourself and your spirituality, but that's what apologetics conference has tried to do

01:05:29

We try to engage ideas for where they're at. So here's the question people might have why would an apologetics conference deal with?

01:05:37

critical race theory and intersectionality well if Critical race theory is true then

01:05:47

Objectivity and absolute truth is dead You can't have an objective understanding of the gospel

01:05:55

You can't have an objective understanding of what the Bible says. You can't do apologetics because apologetics says that we have

01:06:05

Reason that can tell us about reality and can give us a Christian coherent worldview

01:06:10

So in many ways, why wouldn't an apologist want to give this? Whole topic a platform for an entire conference because if critical theory is true

01:06:20

Apologetics is dead. That's why we want to address it We want to be able to defend once for all for the faith

01:06:28

Not just my perspective of faith that was delivered unto the Saints We want to stand with Paul and say there are other

01:06:37

Gospels that are out there. Not just my perspective on the Gospels, but Objectively different gospels that are out there

01:06:47

That's why we are ultimately arguing for this. We don't want to go down the road that says

01:06:52

Critical race theory is wrong but yet we can find some third way some middle ground position where we can take parts of this epistemology and Mix it with our theology because we find that those two bedfellows can't reside with one another

01:07:09

Somebody's got to go Somebody's got to go out and what we want to do is we want to stand firm on the historic

01:07:15

Protestant gospel and throw out that post -modern Epistemology that can't undergird and defend that gospel

01:07:23

Perfect bill where can people go to sign up for the conference and then where can they go if they want to I know you're An author book you as a speaker to come at maybe their event

01:07:33

If you want to come to our conference just go to the International Society of Christian apologetics and on that website

01:07:40

You will find a link to our conference You know, we're still offering a discounted price up till March 1st

01:07:47

You can come you can get the 20 % discount for the conference And if you want to contact me just go to my website

01:07:54

William Roach org go to the contact page and you can reach out to me and we can address this as an academic or we

01:08:01

Can address it very practically within a congregation because I know both need to be done We dealt with it kind of in the middle today so we can go either more or less but we really want to address this topic because It's a watershed issue for evangelicalism

01:08:16

We will look back upon this time and we'll see that the battle is for the total truthfulness

01:08:21

Whereas Schaeffer Francis Schaeffer would have said The nature of true truth in our apologetic age and if they want to book you

01:08:30

To come speak Contact me through my website there. It'll send me an email and we can dialogue and converse williamroach .org.

01:08:37

All right Well, uh, dr. Roach. I know i've been calling you bill, but dr.

01:08:42

Roach. Thank you so much for giving me Your time and my audience your time and we look forward to seeing more from you soon