I haven't posted in a while...let's see if I can finally get my name to show up in the box...

I was in San Diego too for the conference. Would've been nice to meet you Charlie. I was only there for a day, however, which was too bad, because there were a lot of talks I'd like to have heard. I'm sure you noticed JP Moreland's talk because it had a title that was hard to miss: "How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What We Can Do About It"  I wasn't there that day, but for those of you that haven't heard about it, in the spirit of charity, please don't be tempted to judge a book (or a paper or a brother) by its cover (or title). It's really quite a good paper in my opinion. He defines 'overcommitted' so as to make sure his audience knows in just what sense he does and doesn't mean it and I found myself in agreement with him when he uses his narrowly defined sense of 'overcomitted'. For those who've read his book Kingdom Triangle, the paper topic I think is related to some of the ideas he wrote about on the recovery of knowledge in Christianity.

There have been comments on a Christianity Today blog, some of which have been pretty critical of him (mostly by people who haven't read the paper at all, it seems), so Morelandresponded by posting a copy of his paper along with comments at his blog at kingdomtriangle.blogspot.com  There's a discussion on the paper starting up there on the forum under the post entitled "Moreland Responds to CT blog" if anyone cares to join. I'm pretty interested in this topic, so I'll probably spend some time there seeing what happens. I didn't want to join the CT one as it was getting a little wild and wooly.

I am sorry that we did not get a chance to meet. Thanks  for pointing out the copy of the paper online, I was drawn to a parallel session on OT Historiography, a group which I often attend, and so was not able to attend Moreland's session. I have skimmed his paper, and here are some thoughts (probably not worth the time it takes to read) based on the quick reading.

1. I am not in essence in disagrement with his proposal that the Bible is the ultimate not the sole authority for us. Anyone who says that the Bible is the sole authority for us today is either redefining the terms or just silly.

2. The area I disagree is twofold. Moreland is considerably more optomistic about being able to learn from extra-Biblical sources, while I am more cynical. I think that we can learn from other sources and do learn from them, but we have to be much more careful with them. Further, Moreland does not seem to give recognition (althgouth I am sure he does in theory) to the fact that the "other books" must also be interpreted. Sure the Bible must be interpreted. But so must our experiences and other sources of info (this is also an area where I disagree with Mark Noll, who gives too high a view to modern learning in my opinion). This critique relates to his view of apologetics, which leans much more strongly towards evidentalism than I am comfortable with. It also relates to his dim view of postmodernism: he still seems strongly committed to modernism and its view of a neutral unbiased observer who can simply and correctly interpret events. I think that the postmodern critique should be given more weight. 

3. The other area of disagrement is simply where he applies his idea that we should learn from extra-biblical sources. We can indeed learn truth from virtually anywhere. But some places contain more truth than others (say, Augustine's Confessions vs. Hitler's Mein Kampf, as extreme examples). I think that the areas where he says we need to learn from are areas where truth will be hard to find and will have to undergo extensive interpretation.  

Sounds like we are in more agreement than I thought we might be.

About the areas of disagreement, it would be interesting to have a discussion on what we know and how we know it. I lean more toward evidentialism, or at least a classical apologetic view, and away from presuppositionalism. While I do think we interpret many things and are fallible in those interpretations, I think this admission gives the unfortunate impression that we're trapped behind our interpretations, unable to simply know the world as it is in itself. To claim that we're trapped behind our interpretations (or our worldview if you will) seems a mistake, since it presupposes that we can get outside of our interpretations in order to confidently assert that we can't get outside of our interpretations. The recent theological pessimism about foundationalism, I think commits this error.

I have to come clean that I have a pretty dim view of the postmodern account of knowledge, which is generally pragmatist, and from what I can tell coherentist. But this dim view doesn't make one a modernist. Foundationalism isn't modernist, unless perhaps we're talking about classical foundationalism. But there are other foundationalist views that allow for the possibility of fallibility, and most foundationalists I know are not of the classical sort, and will readily admit that they're fallible. They demonstrate how one need not have a postmodern view of knowledge to embody the virtue of epistemic humility. 

 What does anyone else think? A discussion on knowledge? I've also started posting over at kingdomtriangle.blogspot.com in their discussion  forums under the name "Tim".  Maybe I'll see some of you here or there?