What can we know? How do we know? How certain is our knowledge? These and similar questions have occupied men and women for millennia and continue to occupy them today. They are especially urgent for people who live, as we do, in a time when many of those who shape public opinion deny the very existence of knowledge and truth.

Such sceptical ideas are not new. In both ancient and modern times there have been people who believed that over-arching truth does not exist, and that therefore the individual has to create his or her own truths – and occasionally these sceptics have been influential. Never before, however, have they been as successful in spreading the seeds of radical doubt as they are today, in our postmodern society. Their success derives from a number of circumstances. Among them is the fact that, for the first time in our history, scepticism is at the core of the prevailing worldview. As a result, it affects schools and the media to a much larger extent than ever before; and in an age of mass education and electronics these schools and media reach a much higher percentage of the population than was the case in former times.

Because we are in the world, we do not escape these influences. It is therefore important that we make a point of testing the prevailing spirit of scepticism and try to find an answer to the questions it poses. We will give special attention to the important role which theories of knowledge play in the matter. As I hope will become apparent in this article, an awareness of this concept and its influence will help us not only to trace the causes of the postmodern denial of truth, but also provide us with a means of escape from today’s quagmire of scepticism and doubt.

We can only reach this goal, however, by following a roundabout way. Postmodernism grew out of modernism: it is both a consummation of modernism and a rebellion against it. Therefore, if we want to give an adequate explanation of its nature, we will have to begin with a survey of modernist attitudes and of the differences between modernism and postmodernism. We will first give a description of modernism (paying special attention to its prevailing theory of knowledge) and then list some of the reasons for today’s widespread rejection of modernist ideals. Many of these reasons, we will notice, are to be found in twentieth-century political and social developments and in recent advances in science and technology.

Ideas, however, also played a role in the shift from modernism to postmodernism. We will concentrate on the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), describe his rejection of both modernism and Christianity, and note the way in which he influenced postmodernist attitudes toward knowledge and truth, including religious truth.

In this article we attempt to explain the postmodernist denial of truth, and we concentrate on the second part of our thesis, namely the way in which a proper understanding of human knowing can serve as an antidote to all-out skepticism. Such an understanding, based on a critique of the modern theory of knowledge, has indeed been achieved by a number of late-modern and postmodern thinkers, and we will proceed by looking at the way in which their accomplishments can benefit us. We will give attention to the work which the Reformed theologian and philosopher Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) has done in this respect, and concluding one concentrates on the contributions of the Anglo-Hungarian philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891-1976).

Modernism⤒🔗

First, then, a brief description of modernism. The modern period lasted from about 1600 until well into the twentieth century. Its demise and replacement by postmodernism is usually said to have happened some time after the Second World War, somewhere in the 1960s or thereabouts. As a cultural period, modernism followed the Middle-Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. Among its more important characteristics are the following:

1. The scientific revolution, and the amazing advances made in science, and subsequently in science-based technology.

2. The rise of Western Europe as a global power, one that in course of time managed to control the rest of the world economically, politically, and to a large extent also intellectually and culturally. The modern age was the age of the white man, who began to speak of his exalted position as his “manifest destiny.”

3. The expansion of the western world’s economy; the great increase in trade and commerce and also in people’s material wellbeing; the rise and triumph of capitalism; the industrial revolutions.

4. The liberalization of politics; the birth of democracy; the stress on human rights, and the growing concern with humanitarianism.

5. The process of secularization. Modern culture in its early stages was still officially Christian, but towards the end of the period the official culture had become secular, and in many ways even anti-Christian – even though Christianity itself not only survived, but greatly expanded in that same period.

6. The confidence in human reason, as exemplified especially in the faith in the scientific pursuit; and the belief that, given time, science and technology would overcome all the problems humanity faced and establish a heavenly city on earth. This confidence gave rise to:

7. The so-called Idea of Progress which implied a belief in human and social perfectibility. Before long this idea would develop into a belief in automatic progress and so help bring about the rise of evolutionism.

8. The dominance of a theory of knowledge according to which objectively certain knowledge can be achieved as long as one follows the approved method, namely the scientific one. Because theory of knowledge is central to our discussion, I must say a bit more about the modernist one.

The modern theory was closely related to the modern scientific method. The fathers of that method were the Englishman Sir Francis Bacon, who died in 1626, and the Frenchman René Descartes (Cartesius), who died in 1650. Descartes, a mathematician, was the more influential of the two, and the method is therefore usually called the Cartesian one. The method stressed careful logical reasoning and strict objectivity. To guarantee the latter, Descartes insisted that scientists begin by doubting away all subjective elements – that is, all personal and cultural preconceptions, all personal wishes, and also all religious beliefs. Neutrality and detachment were the prerequisite for the achievement of fully objective knowledge.

The method worked well, especially in the early modern period, when most scientific work was done in astronomy and physics. It worked so well that it came to be seen as foolproof. Descartes himself believed that a good mind was not really necessary in scientific work; mediocre thinkers, as long as they followed the rules, could do as well as geniuses. Adherence to the proper method ensured success. This widely-shared opinion gave rise to the modernist creed that “Science is god and method is its prophet.” Postmodernists refer to this belief as the faith in scientism, or the cult of scientific objectivity. They are fighting it tooth and nail, and rightly so, for while it has been highly effective in some areas, it has also done great harm.

I said that the Cartesian method worked well, but that is not quite the way to put it. Scientists never really followed the official version, nor did they engage in the universal doubt that Descartes prescribed – even if they thought they did. The real harm done by the cult of scientism was the belief that the scientific method, as Descartes himself proclaimed, was to be applied universally: that it was the means to reach objective truth not just in science, but also in all other areas of thought. Descartes himself followed it, for example, to prove the existence of God. And so it gave birth to the prevailing theory of knowledge of modernism, which means that it was indeed applied in deciding upon all manner of things – things both human and divine. Not surprisingly, before long the theory was used to judge the validity of divine revelation and, in the end, to dismiss its truth claims. (By stating this I am not suggesting that the scientist faith and the theory of knowledge that was built on it were the only reasons for the secularization of Europe under modernism. There were other factors. Yet the scientist cult played a very important role in this development.)

The Turn to Postmodernism←⤒🔗

Perhaps I have left the impression that all was optimism and certainty under modernism. This was not the case. We also meet skepticism, pessimism, fear, and cultural discontent in the modern age. Yet overall the period can be characterized as optimistic, indeed as extravagantly optimistic. The extravagance of its expectations, and the twentieth-century’s realization of its absolute groundlessness, goes a long way in explaining the postmodern reaction.

The realization of modernism’s failure dawned when the twentieth century was still young. A major reason was the devastating First World War, but that, of course, was only the start. The First World War was followed by the Second, by the rise of totalitarianisms, the gulag, the holocaust, the Cold War, and also by the rebellion of Europe’s colonies. The West no longer dominated the rest. While all these things happened, people also realized that science and technology, the idols of modernism, were not just forces for good, but frequently for evil as well. They made possible nuclear weaponry, caused pollution and the exhaustion of natural resources, and, with the advances made in bio-technology, exposed society to a variety of other threats. Instead of being adored, it came to be seen as a threat, at best a necessary evil.

The factors contributing to postmodernism were not all of a negative nature. A very important element was the so-called second scientific revolution, which took place in the early twentieth century. I am referring to the new physics, and to the array of technological devices (laser, computer, and so on) which the new physics made possible. Especially because of the effect which this technology had on communication and transportation, it drastically changed society and its economy and greatly contributed to the postmodern concept of the world as a global village.

It is important to note, however, that in spite of their tremendous technological potential, the scientific advances of the early twentieth century did not enhance society’s faith in human reason, as such advances had tended to do in the past. In fact, they contributed to the decline of that faith. Both quantum physics and Einstein’s relativity theories made it clear that modern thinkers had been overly optimistic. Early modern scientists had believed that the world was a machine and altogether intelligible. As the eighteenth-century English poet Alexander Pope famously expressed it: “Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night; God said: ‘Let Newton be!’ and all was light.” Einstein and his colleagues showed, however, that science cannot fully explain the universe and may never be able to do so. Nature is again seen as mysterious, beyond human understanding. In that sense the new science, unlike the science of Newton and his colleagues, diminished mankind’s stature.

Nor was that the end of the story. Problems arose also in the field of mathematics. Long considered the way to all truth, it now became increasingly evident that it contained unresolvable paradoxes. Furthermore, it appeared that Euclidean geometry did not have universal validity: one mathematical system fitted one area of research, another was needed for a different one. This discovery introduced the period not only of post-Euclidean mathematics, but also of post-Euclidean relativism. Add to these developments the theories of historicism and of the sociology of knowledge that truth depends on time and place and is therefore relative, and of psychoanalysts like Freud and his peers about the preponderance of the irrational in man, and you see the deepening chasm between the modernist attitude of humanism and optimistic rationalism, and the postmodernist disbelief in man and human reason.

The Fall of Marxism←⤒🔗

Yet another important factor in the rise of postmodernism is the failure of communism, the very system that had been considered humanity’s last best hope. It had promised to realize the Enlightenment ideal of creating a heavenly city on earth and insisted that its success was guaranteed by the laws of science. For communism thrives on scientism. It is inconceivable apart from the modern theory of knowledge. Because of its humanitarian goals and its scientific pretensions, communism had drawn the allegiance of millions upon millions of people in both East and West, including a large number of western intellectuals. Its failure became apparent as early as the 1930s, but the evidence was papered over. It could no longer be disguised, however, after the post-war disclosures first of Stalin’s and then also of Lenin’s crimes. The collapse of faith in communism was a major cause of the student rebellions and the counter culture of the 1960s, the decade which many historians designate as the one in which postmodernist ideas began to reach a critical mass. Several of today’s postmodernist philosophers, in fact, are converts from communism and date their conversion from that period.

Friedrich Nietzsche←⤒🔗

All the above-mentioned factors, contributed to the rise of postmodernism. They do not fully explain it, however. The first stirrings of postmodernism occur already in the late nineteenth century, when things were going as well in the western world – politically, economically, and socially – as they had ever been going, when people had never yet heard of quantum physics, relativity theory, or nuclear energy, and when the Czar still controlled Russia.

These early stirrings suggest that the roots of postmodernism are to be found in our culture’s spiritual discontent. We notice this most clearly in the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who died in 1900 – that is, before the rise of the new physics, and a full fourteen years before the outbreak of World War I.

Nietzsche’s Message←⤒🔗

Nietzsche is the man who, more than anyone else, prepared the stage for postmodernism, and who continues to influence it at practically every level. The son of a Lutheran minister, he turned against Christianity as a student and from then on dedicated his life to proclaiming that God is dead. He did not mean that God had actually died; only that all people everywhere had always believed in a god or gods, and that now, for the first time, a culture had arisen which was convinced that there is no God and that there never has been one.

Nietzsche was aware of the traumatic implications of this disbelief in God, and he tried to make his contemporaries aware of them. In a well-known parable he spoke of the death of God as an unchaining of the earth from its sun and a closing in of darkness. (Some decades later, in1922, the poet William Butler Yeats would give a similar message when he wrote, in his poem “The Second Coming,” that, with our culture’s loss of the faith that had so long sustained it, “...Things fall apart; The centre cannot  hold.”)

Nietzsche showed that disbelief in God and the rejection of Christianity meant the end of the 2000-year Christian age of innocence and the transformation of all values. Ending the period of Christian values such as humility, gentleness, and compassion, it would introduce a society of cruelty and of naked power, of a master and a herd morality, of a minority of selected supermen who were “beyond good and evil” and a majority which had no other task in life than to serve these masters. Nietzsche was no Nazi, but he did inspire Hitler and his henchmen.

There were, he showed, other implications of atheism – implications that are of particular importance for our understanding of postmodernism. I will, therefore, list them. For Nietzsche the “death of God” meant, among other things, that:

1. Darwin was right: man is not the creature of a benevolent and rational supernatural being, but the chance product of a non-rational, amoral, natural process. This means that he is no more than a beast, and that, if he is no longer restrained by the Christian moral code and is given half a chance, he will behave like a beast.

2. The motive power of the universe and of all things it contains, including the human being, is the will to power. Justice is the right of the stronger, in the physical universe and among men, just as it is in the animal world.

3. Because there is no God, there is no universal, overarching truth. What we call truth is not found (it couldn’t be, for it is non-existent) but made. People establish their own truths as they see fit. The same applies to moral codes. Scepticism (disbelief in universal truths) and subjective relativism (each person decides upon his or her own personal truth and moral code) are, Nietzsche showed, the inevitable consequences of atheism. Utter chaos is prevented only because the strong minority imposes its laws on the powerless majority. This means, incidentally, that democracy is out of the question, and Nietzsche himself rejected democracy. In that respect he was more consistent than are his modern-day followers. In any event, the universal moral code which Christianity provided, and which applied to both the powerful and the weak, had lost its legitimacy – for God, its supposed Author, was dead. Instead of having descended from above, the moral law had been imposed on society by the dominant minority.

4. Science is not a means to find truth (for again, there is no truth), but is inspired by the will to power. The same applies to all other human pursuits. All the so-called verities, such as universally valid laws of logic, universal moral truths, the uniformity and orderliness of the cosmos, the unchanging laws of nature, all these verities are fictions – necessary ones, but fictions nevertheless.

5. People may think they are looking for truth, but they are deceiving themselves. They are wearing masks and are inherently hypocritical. The real motivation of all their endeavours, whether they know it or not, is the will to power.

6. A false judgment is not to be rejected because it is false, Nietzsche says. The important thing about any judgment is “...to what extent it is life-promoting, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-cultivating.”

7. We are products and creatures of the earth, and to the earth we must turn for salvation (or at least such salvation as the earth makes available; Nietzsche does not really spell that out). Perhaps the greatest crime of Christianity was its otherworldliness.

8. Language, Nietzsche teaches, is central in our lives for a variety of reasons, two of which we will look at here.

The Role of Language←⤒🔗

1. Firstly, language is a prison. This is so, according to Nietzsche and his present-day followers, because our thinking is determined by our language, that is, by its vocabulary, grammar, and metaphors. Among the examples they use is that of the so-called binary oppositions. Western languages abound in such oppositions. Examples are: God-man, Creator-creature, man-woman, subject-object, good-evil, and so on. Because of our language, Nietzsche and postmodernists say, we cannot but think in terms of such oppositions. There are also languages, however, that suggest the oneness of God and man, of God and nature, of male and female, of good and evil. Think of oriental languages which are built on the faith in pantheism, on the belief in androgynous gods (that is, gods that have both male and female characteristics), on the belief that good and evil are different sides of the same thing. The people using these languages see reality in an altogether different light than we do. In short, a person’s language determines his view of God and man and nature, of reality as a whole. This is why Nietzsche could say, “We will never get rid of God because we still believe in grammar.” For western languages, including their use of binary oppositions, assume the existence of a transcendent God. And again, the same type of power is exerted by vocabulary and metaphors.

2. But secondly, if language is a prison, it is also a power tool. Nietzsche knew his history and was aware of the fact that cultures are made and unmade by the power of ideas, of messages – that is, of language, of the word. He had delusions of divine grandeur and tried to imitate God, who had created the world by his Word of power, and who had redeemed it by the Incarnate Word. Nietzsche compared at least one of his books to the Bible and believed that, by means of his writings, he could do what God had done, that is, use language to create a new world. It meant that he had to begin by destroying the Christian society he hated and then proceed to create a new one, according to his own specifications.

Nietzsche’s Influence on Postmodernism←⤒🔗

So much for Nietzsche’s ideas. Although incomplete, the list should give a good idea of the strong influence this German philosopher exerted on postmodernism. True, there are differences as well. Nietzsche said, for example, that the hidden agenda behind all we say or do – no matter how idealistic it may appear – is the will to power. Postmodernists have learned from Marx and Freud, and say that the hidden agenda can also be formed by socio-economic rivalry, or by desire for the satisfaction of our instinctual desires, such as the sex drive. But they agree with Nietzsche that we wear masks, that we are inherently hypocritical, that our words can’t be trusted. We don’t mean what we say. Even our most pious words and acts we are driven by ulterior motives, that is, by the will to power, by class hatred, and/or by the desire for sexual satisfaction.

Another difference is that postmodernists are more humanitarian than Nietzsche was. They believe in empowering the weak. This may be in part (although only in part) a result of the fact that they have forged an alliance with feminists, gays, racial minorities, and other formerly “marginalized” groups. They have therefore qualified Nietzsche’s idea about the cause of western evils. Nietzsche said that it was the mixture of Christian theology and Greek philosophy which inspired the founders of our civilization and is at the root of our problems. Postmodernists say that the culprit is the white, heterosexual, European male, dead or alive.

But again, the difference is minor. Like Nietzsche, postmodernists also say that it was a clique of privileged power brokers which formed our society and kept it under their thumbs, and that they did and do so primarily by their creation and control of language. Therefore, for the new society to arise, our language – its grammar and vocabulary and metaphors and so on – must be changed, and our history and literary and religious heritage deconstructed. A different language must be introduced – one that takes power away from the white, heterosexual, western male and gives it to the marginalized.

Modernists believed that with the help of science and technology humanity would be able to overcome whatever obstacles to happiness still existed and in course of time establish a heavenly city upon earth.

We have seen that the disasters of the twentieth century destroyed that dream, and that this development goes a long way in explaining the anger and scepticism of postmodernists. Another factor in the rise of postmodernism, which we noted especially in the case of Nietzsche, is our culture’s religious apostasy. Nietzsche predicted that the “death of God” – that is, the triumph of atheism in western thought – implies the death of man as we have known him, and the postmodern era shows that this prediction was correct. Instead of a rational being, made in the image of God, man has become an irrational creature whose actions are motivated not by the search for truth, but by the demand for power and for the satisfaction of instinctual desires.

Attempting to explain these factors – the misplaced confidence of modernism and the process of secularization in modern and postmodern times – we mentioned the important role played by the modern theory of knowledge. We will first review the reasons why postmodernism rejects the modern theory and replaces it with one of all-out scepticism. Having done so, we will show that, although postmodernism is correct in declaring the modernist theory to be bankrupt, this bankruptcy does not have to lead to the denial of truth. The choice, in other words, is not between modern belief in scientific objectivism and postmodern scepticism. There is a better way.

The Modern Theory of Knowledge←⤒🔗

Theories of knowledge have been around ever since the ancient Greeks. They were developed to provide answers to the questions all thinking humans are concerned with: the questions whether truth exists and, if it does, what we must do to find it.

In the foregoing we spoke of one such theory, the modernist one, which we owe primarily to René Descartes. We saw that it was based on doubt of all received wisdoms and of all other subjective influences. To gain full objectivity and therefore absolute certainty, every effort had to be made to exclude the personal element in the search for knowledge and proceed in a fully detached manner. As in mathematics, the discipline on which Descartes modelled it, the method would lead to conclusions that were logically necessary and therefore unquestionably true. In this way human fallibility would be overcome. The method’s infallibility meant that what science declared was the truth and nothing but the truth, and that whatever could not pass the scientific test was not worthy of consideration. This test was to be applied to all knowledge, including that which is based on faith in revelation.

One reason for the theory’s long life was its promise of intellectual certainty. No less important, however, was its scientific efficiency. This explains why, in spite of its rationalism, even many Christians came to accept it as the way to objective truth. I know that on occasion Christian thinkers voiced objections to Cartesianism, but generally speaking Christians, also Protestant Christians, learned to live with the modern theory. It appeared to be so self-evidently true that many did not even think of scrutinizing it. Theories of knowledge are in that respect like worldviews; people tend to accept a worldview without knowing that the thing exists, or because (in the words of philosopher Alfred North Whitehead) no alternative has ever occurred to them. This, then, applied to theories of knowledge as well. Many Christians simply assumed that these theories were religiously neutral and that the prevailing one had to lead to objective truth. In that respect the opinions of most Christians were no different from those of the population as a whole.

The Postmodern Reaction←⤒🔗

That universal trust in Cartesianism came under attack in the course of the twentieth century. I have already alluded to the reasons. People rejected it because it had so notoriously failed to bring about the promised heavenly city. They realized, moreover, the harmful effects of the faith in scientific infallibility – effects that were evident in the unlimited growth of science and technology, which was now seen as a threat, and also in such disastrous schemes as communism.

The questioning of the prevailing theory has led to two different responses. Many postmodern thinkers, having come to reject the entire idea of knowledge and truth, want to get rid of theories of knowledge altogether. They turn from theory of knowledge to theories of interpretation, particularly literary interpretation. That is far more subjective. You can do with a book or any other text whatever you want to do with it. As one postmodernist philosopher put it: a literary critic may ask himself the same question about a text that “the engineer or the physicist asks himself about a puzzling physical object: how shall I describe this in order to get it to do what I want?”

This means that a text can have as many meanings as there are readers; that meaning becomes altogether relative. It also means that our entire intellectual and religious heritage can be destroyed, which postmodernists in fact want to do. And it is attractive for many, because it conveys power (we can do with a text what we want to do with it), and it has therapeutic value (we interpret a text in such a way that it makes us feel good). Our culture since Freud is therapeutic in any event. And let’s not think that we are immune to this approach. We meet it in extreme forms of so-called reader-response theories. We also encounter it when feminists or gays – or we ourselves – pick and choose what we want from a text, including the Bible.

That, then, is one response. Fortunately, it is not the only one. There are also thinkers who, while rejecting the modern theory of knowledge, continue to believe in the possibility of reaching truth. It is this development to which I want to draw your attention, for it is a positive and promising one. It is especially important for Christians. For the modern epistemology has for some centuries placed a stranglehold on faith, and its influence continues in postmodern times. We have all experienced that influence, and our young people are not immune to it either. If modern or postmodern thinkers show us it is fallacious and suggest viable alternatives, we should pay attention.

Kuyper’s Critique of Scientism←⤒🔗

Some of the early critics of the modern theory of knowledge were Reformed theologians and philosophers. Among them were the American theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) and the Dutchman Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920). We will be dealing here with Kuyper’s critique, which involved the following arguments.

Firstly, Kuyper showed, Descartes was wrong: the scientific method does not and cannot guarantee absolute objectivity. One of the reasons why it cannot do so is that we are fallen and finite people, prone to unintended mistakes in observation, in memory, and in the processes of thought. We are also prone to deliberate falsehoods, to a wrong use of the imagination, to bodily and psychological weaknesses, special pleading, and the temptation to pursue our own selfish interests. Kuyper further included what he called the “darkening of our consciousness,” by which he meant our frequent lack of sympathy toward the object of our investigation, which causes us to stand not alongside but over against it. Anticipating a typically postmodern conviction, he concluded that “this estrangement from the object of our knowledge is the greatest obstacle in the way to our knowledge of it.”

That was one array of subjective or personal elements – elements which Descartes and his followers had simply overlooked. Another subjective element, Kuyper said, is the role which faith plays in knowledge. He was referring here not first of all to religious faith, but to faith as a mental function, common to all people, and devoid of all religious content. He said that all knowledge is based on faith in this sense, that faith has an essential function in the search for knowledge, and that it is the only way to certainty. It is needed, for example, to convince us that our senses do not deceive us (for that can never be proven; it must be believed), and it also plays an essential role in our reasoning. For reasoning starts from axioms or first principles (such as, for example, that I and other minds exist, that there is a real world out there, that the same thing cannot be true and false at the same time). Again, none of these first principles can be proven; they must be believed, and they are believed.

Faith is also essential in drawing up and accepting the universal laws with which scientists work. For we cannot prove that these laws are indeed universal, because we don’t know whether they were valid in the past or will be valid in the future; we simply assume this. That is, we believe in such notions as the stability, orderliness, and uniformity of nature.

In short, Kuyper concluded, universal doubt is not the highway to truth; the only way to reach truth, including scientific truth, is the way of faith. Without it, we cannot even begin to think or act. It is therefore nonsense to say, as believers in scientism have done for centuries, that knowledge based on faith is inferior to knowledge based on “scientific proof”; that science establishes truths which are binding on all people and are fully certain, but that faith is a matter of superstition and uncertainty. For faith as a mental faculty is the foundation of all knowledge, including the scientific kind.

Kuyper gave faith of course also a religious function. Reminding people that believers, as well as atheists, are moved by religious convictions, he showed that a theory of knowledge is not religiously neutral: a person’s religious faith commitments influence the way in which he interprets his data. This is the reason, he said, why in many matters believing and unbelieving scientists will come to different conclusions. An obvious example, to which he himself referred, is the theory of evolution.

Kuyper Today←⤒🔗

Kuyper was a Dutchman, and although some of his work was translated into English and into a number of other languages, it did not become widely known. He did influence believers in his own country, however, and today he is avidly studied by American Christians as well, especially by evangelical Christians of a Reformed bent. These people study Kuyper because, as they themselves tell us, too many American evangelicals continue to believe, deep down, in the infallibility of science and in the full objectivity of its method. They have done so from the start of American history, a habit they brought with them from their Puritan and Scottish-Presbyterian backgrounds.

They got a rude shock in the second half of the nineteenth century with the rise of Darwin’s evolutionism and the higher biblical criticism. Many of them refused, however, to admit that these approaches were a result of Darwin’s and the other scientists’ faith commitments. They continued to believe that the scientific method, if properly applied, must lead to objective and certain truth, and they concluded that evolutionists and biblical critics had come to their conclusions because they had applied the scientific method wrongly. The Christian answer therefore, they reasoned, was to apply the method more rigorously. The Reformed-evangelical scholars to whom I referred tell us that this abiding belief in Cartesianism is behind the still existing tendency among evangelicals to promote such beliefs as dispensationalism and scientific creationism, both of which attempt to prove the truth of the Bible in an evidentialist, scientific manner.

We are confronted here with what has been called the anti-modernist modernism of much of American evangelicalism. It is anti-modernist because it rejects evolutionism and biblical criticism and accepts the Bible as the true and infallible Word of God. But it is modernist in that it tries to fight the enemy with the enemy’s own weapons, namely the scientism of the Cartesian theory of knowledge. It is this tendency that Kuyper showed to be erroneous and dangerous to the faith, and that he fought throughout his career. As we will see later in his fight against the scientist creed he is receiving support from an increasing number of postmodern thinkers – including men and women who do not share Kuyper’s religious faith.

Michael Polanyi←⤒🔗

Kuyper was not a postmodern but a late-modern thinker, although he anticipated ideas that came to the fore in our postmodern period. In that sense he was in the same league as Nietzsche, who was his contemporary. Of course, their messages were altogether opposite. Also, Kuyper’s words did not spread nearly as widely as Nietzsche’s. The truly striking thing, however, is that in our days Kuyper’s critique of the Cartesian theory of knowledge is being echoed by increasingly large number of thinkers, by Christians, but also by non-Christians. These postmodern thinkers include scientists, philosophers and theologians, linguists and psychologists, historians and sociologists, in short, people from practically every discipline under the sun. All these men and women, while realizing the defects of the modern theory of knowledge, do not deny the need for a theory of knowledge per se, and several of them are proposing means for a replacement of the modern one.

A leader among these people is the Anglo-Hungarian philosopher of science Michael Polanyi, who died in 1976. Polanyi is the man who has made a point of showing the very close connection between the modern theory of knowledge and such utopian schemes as communism. He is also the man who has done more than any of his contemporaries, and also more than Kuyper, to develop the contours of a new theory of knowledge.

Polanyi’s Critique←⤒🔗

I cannot go into the details of Polanyi’s critique, nor can I properly outline his proposals for a new theory of knowledge. That would take far too long. All I can do is mention some of his theory’s salient characteristics.

Polanyi, who was an internationally known physical scientist before turning to philosophy, has shown, firstly, that scientists don’t begin with universal doubt, even if they think they do. They begin with faith, a point to which I will return. Secondly, he shows how the culture of scientism has poisoned our entire intellectual and moral atmosphere and has led, as I already mentioned, to such bloody utopian schemes as communism. A major reason is, he says, that scientism implies a belief in automatism. If only you apply the method, the result must follow. That did not happen in communism, and so recourse was had to force and coercion. He also shows that that kind of scientism is as strong as ever in our postmodern days.

Thirdly, Polanyi emphasizes the fact that we are not detached observers but are personally involved in the scientific pursuit. (The book in which he gives the most detailed outline of his critique and his new theory is entitled Personal Knowledge.) We are personally involved because we are moved not by scepticism, but, as Kuyper also said, by faith. Among the objects of faith is traditional, inherited wisdom, as well as the existence of a reality which we cannot yet see. Again, I will come back to the issue of faith in Polanyi’s system.

In short, Polanyi attacks the ideas of automatism, personal detachment, and scepticism on which the modernist theory of knowledge was built. He also shows, fourthly, that because scientists are finite and because the personal element intrudes at every stage of their work, they are prone to make errors. In other words, the scientific method is neither foolproof nor absolutely certain. It remains tentative.

All this does not mean that Polanyi, any more than Kuyper, wants to replace the objective ideal with a subjective one, and so make truth relative. He knows that there is a multitude of reality checks in science and in other disciplines. You can’t get away with murder; if you try, the outcome of your theory will show up your deception and your peers will disown you. Still, another factor that prevents us from collapsing into relativism is the role of faith. Polanyi says, as we saw, that scientists are motivated by the belief that truth is real and will be recognized by those who truly seek it. And they pursue their research, he adds, with what he calls universal intent – by which he means that they are committed to goals that have universal validity.

Polanyi reasons in a circular manner. He knows that and reminds us that all our ultimate commitments are based on circular reasoning, but also that such circularity is not vicious. In science as in other intellectual pursuits, and also in religion, we begin with faith in a reality that is as yet unseen or only dimly perceived, and we build on that faith, he says, with passionate, personal commitment, and also with universal intent. Faith is, again as in Kuyper, a means to reach knowledge and to achieve certainty of knowledge. It is, as Hebrew 11 states, “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (RSV). Polanyi often quotes the church father Augustine, who said, following the Bible, that unless we believe, we will not understand. And remember that Polanyi and many of his colleagues and followers are not Bible-believing Christians.

Application←⤒🔗

I would have liked to say more about Polanyi and about several of his peers – men like Thomas Kuhn, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, and so on – and especially about the bearing their ideas have on religious faith, but the article is becoming overly long. We will have to make do with what has been said about Kuyper and Polanyi. I hope that I have succeeded in showing the relevance of the ideas of these two men for Christians – and I also hope that our readers will find ways of spreading the message and of applying it. I am thinking here of parents but also, and especially, of teachers. After all, this article was based on a paper that was prepared for an audience of principals. I ended that original paper with suggestions how as teachers we can apply the message in the classroom, and I would like to conclude the article in a similar manner.

Firstly, students should be reminded of the obvious fact that in practically all our everyday actions we proceed (and in most cases proceed quite well) without the benefit of scientific proof. The same thing applies to our everyday assumptions. We believe (but cannot prove) that the sun will rise, that our breakfast is free from poison and reasonably nutritious, that our means of transportation are reliable, that school (or the office, or the store) will be open, and so on. In that sense, we “walk by faith.” If we insisted on demonstrative proof that all our actions are safe and justified before we engage in them, we would not even be able to get up in the morning.

No less importantly, students should be reminded, in the teaching of Bible and church history but also in that of academic subjects, that faith has an essential function not only in enabling us to live our daily lives, but also in the process of knowing and of achieving certainty.

This implies, among other things, that students must be shown (not just told, but indeed shown) that science is not the way to all truth; that it opens to us only a restricted area of knowledge; that it cannot lead us to the Infinite; and that it certainly does not have the right to dictate what we can and cannot believe.

But at the same time it must be made clear to them that we can have knowledge, reliable knowledge, in science as in other fields, even if that knowledge is not exhaustive. Nor should we expect it to be exhaustive: after all, we are only creatures – a truth that modernists tended to forget. One Christian author (I have lost the reference) uses in this connection the metaphor of the blind man with the cane. The cane allows him to go where he needs to go, but does not allow him to explore whatever he might like to explore. We are in a similar situation. The same limitations and sufficiency that characterize our scientific knowledge characterize our religious knowledge. The Belgic Confession, Article 2, tells us that God reveals Himself to us in his Word as far as is necessary for us in this life, to His glory and our salvation.

And lastly, students should be reminded of the fact that we learn not only by observation and sight – which is the favoured approach in a scientific age – but also by listening: especially by obedient listening. That is also the means to reach religious certainty. The Dutch language expresses the relationship between listening and obeying well: it speaks of horen (to hear) and gehoorzamen (to obey). The same relationship is implied in the English equivalent. The word “obedience” has as one of its roots the Latin verb for hearing and refers to a kind of “responsive listening.” The Lord Himself taught us the need of obedience if we want to learn and achieve certainty, for example when He said (in John 7:17) that the way to find out whether what He said came from God was to do the will of God, that is, to believe his Word.

Rather than being an obstacle to knowledge, faith makes true knowledge possible. The most striking and the most important accomplishment of our postmodern age is, I personally believe, that an increasing number of its thinkers have rediscovered this ancient truth.