Conference Paper

ECCCS (now SCL) Conference Paper
Presented June 26, 2002
Thought about God from Plato to Plantinga or
The Rise of Postmodernism and What We Can Do About It
by Peter H. Vande Brake, M.Div., Ph.D.

The following paper was presented during the 2002 ECCCS Conference at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. It is a paper that tracks how the history of philosophy has contributed to the rise of postmodernism. The audience was mainly comprised of teaching professionals (K-12) who did not have a strong background in philosophical discourse or the history of philosophy. The object of the paper was to introduce the audience to major figures in the history of philosophy and to help them see how the ideas proposed by these thinkers have shaped the ideas in the broader culture and how they have contributed to the rise of postmodern thought.

Introduction

A vast number of students in classrooms across America are at the mercy of educational philosophies and methods founded in postmodern thought. These modes of teaching will insure that their academic abilities will be diminished and will prevent them from ever reaching their potential as scholars. The educational theories behind the whole language method of teaching reading, invented (or creative) spelling, fuzzy math, and the high priority on fostering self-esteem in children rather than encouraging measurable learning are based in relativistic thought. These theories deny that there is a correspondence of symbol to meaning or of meaning to truth. There is nothing to which one may appeal in order to determine right and wrong or to separate truth from falsehood. The reticence of educational theorists to define parameters or appeal to a universal standard of truth is a result of the pervasive belief in academia that there is no such thing as Truth as an objective reality. There is only subjective truth; that is, truth for the individual. This only leads to more confusion because what is true for you may not be true for me, but that does not mean that one of the two truths is any better or worse than the other.

A couple of pertinent examples will help to illustrate the deep effect that postmodern thought has had on some of America’s most respected institutions of higher learning. John Leo, a contributing editor of U.S. News and World Report, wrote an editorial in the March 11, 2002 edition about “de-cal” classes (Democratic Education at Cal--student-led classes) that take place at the University of California-Berkeley in a piece titled “Naked Came the Coeds.” These are classes which are offered for credit outside of the normal curriculum in which there are no teachers, just “coordinators” and “facilitators,” and everyone is on the same level. Leo explains that educational theory has determined that teacher-led classes are too hierarchical because this system implies that the teachers know more than the students do. Thus, these classes fill the need for a more egalitarian mode of education. The column focuses on a male sexuality course in which students do things like discuss sexual fantasies, invite porn stars to lecture, visit strip clubs, and have class interaction of a sexual nature. Other de-cal class titles are “Body Dissatisfaction,” “The Joy of Garbage,” “Copwatch for Credit,” and “Star Trek Analysis.”1 These courses provide credits that are just as viable as credits earned in calculus, physics, history, or literature classes. These classes are considered legitimate by the academic elite because there are no recognized standard by which one may determine the de-cal classes to be any less valuable or relevant than conventional classes. The standards have been erased by postmodern philosophy.

A second example is given by Chuck Colson in a March 2002 editorial written for Jubilee Extra, a publication of Prison Fellowship Ministries. In the article, “Pushing the (Moral) Limits,” Colson reflects on the Enron disaster and answers the question, “How could this have happened?” by relating a personal experience concerning the teaching of business ethics. He had a friend who gave $20 million to Harvard to start a program teaching ethics at the business school. Colson predicted in an article soon thereafter that the program was doomed to fail because “ethics depends on absolutes, and Harvard was thoroughly committed to philosophical relativism.” Provoked by this article, the Harvard administrators then asked Colson to come and lecture at the business school. Colson’s lecture focused on the question posed by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “Can man be good without God?” Colson’s answer was that man cannot be good without God because there is no ground for absolute truth apart from God. Without God, right and wrong would be determined subjectively, and “we humans are very unreliable and capable of infinite self-justification.” He went on to say that “since Harvard is committed to relativism, it can teach only subjective values, which can never withstand the pressures of life.”

Colson then braced himself for questions, but not one was offered. The students clapped politely and filed out of the lecture hall. He gave the same lecture at Yale, Brown, and other campuses with similar results. He concluded from these experiences that the students did not know what to ask because they had never even thought about the issues. He expects that these very bright business students, and thousands of others like them, will go out into the halls of power “with no basis for ethical behavior other than pragmatism.” The ultimate guide being: “When you’re making a serious business decision, never do anything that you think might end up in the newspapers.”2 The basis for morality and truth has been chiseled away by postmodern thinking which has taken over educational institutions at every level.

Postmodernism is a revolt against standards, morals, universal truths, objective reality, and at its very root, it is a rebellion against God. This rebellion has been gradual and systematic; it has taken millennia to get where we are now. And yet, the essence of postmodernism stems from the temptation in the Garden of Eden: “to be like God,” or to create our own meaning and to determine truth for ourselves. The path to our present relativistic situation is revealed in the history of philosophy. As we see how philosophers have dealt with the areas of epistemology (How can I know anything?), ontology (What is real?), axiology (What is good?), and anthropology (What is a human being?), we begin to understand how culture and the prevailing ideas of any particular period of history are shaped by philosophical ideals. The greatest determining factor in how a philosopher deals with the above mentioned areas of thought is determined by his understanding of God and God’s relation to the human condition. Thus, by tracking the history of the thought about God in philosophy, we are able to see more clearly how we have arrived at this place of relativism, uncertainty, and subjectivism that characterizes our modern culture and why the theories of education that are most prevalent today are antithetical to true learning.
The following brief history is structured in such a way to follow the major ideas of three eras: The Premodern, the Modern, and the Postmodern. Of course, relativism and subjectivism are not new ideas (they go back to the earliest eras of recorded philosophy and have been part of the intellectual landscape ever since). The history of philosophy, and even the thought of the men we will be surveying, is more nuanced and complex than will be discussed in this short essay, but the purpose here is to follow the thread of thought that is connected to the understanding of who God is and how God is related to human knowledge and the meaning of life. This will illustrate the trend that inasmuch as God is removed from the mainstream of academic thought, the possibility for having a meaningful existence also diminishes.

We will see how the basic presuppositions of some of the major figures in each of these eras changed. In the premodern period, we will look at the thought of Socrates, Plato, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas. For these figures, empirical observation was thought to be a reliable way to gain knowledge; it was believed that a greater reality existed beyond the visible world; and for the Christian thinkers, God is at the center of knowledge, the font of all that is good, true, right, and beautiful. There is also the very important presupposition that understanding follows from having an established faith in the world of the Forms (Socrates and Plato) or in God (Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas). There is a method and an attitude of “faith seeking understanding."

In the modern period, the thought of Descartes, Nietzsche, and Camus will be examined. Descartes, almost single-handedly, changed this attitude of “faith seeking understanding” to one of “understanding seeking faith” by means of his skeptic’s proof for the existence of God. His proof was fallacious, and his method was flawed. This is an era in which skepticism and atheistic thinking gained a greater foothold in the mainstream of academic thought. Nietzsche proclaimed the “death of God” and then tried to construct meaning in the aftermath. Camus then adds to this discussion with what we must do to overcome the absurdity of human existence. Meaning and understanding are realized only in the exertion of the human will against the certainty of death and extinction of the human spirit.

The postmodern period signals the end of meaning. Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish provide illustrations for this in their view of what “truth” is. The search for objective meaning has been abandoned in much of the academic world. Subjective truth and meaning are all that are acknowledged and accepted by the vast majority of the academic elite. Alvin Plantinga is an exception to this, and his understanding of “basic belief” will provide a counter-view to many of the presuppositions of postmodern thought.

Socrates and Plato

We will begin our philosophical odyssey with Socrates and Plato. They are grouped together because Socrates never wrote anything himself. Most of what we know about Socrates, we have received from the writings of Plato. Thus, it is difficult to know whether Plato is accurately transmitting the thought of Socrates in the dialogues that he records for us, or whether he is using Socrates as a mouthpiece for his own philosophical ideas. Regardless of what the truth is in this matter, we have in Plato’s writings, one of the first comprehensive attempts to examine life and truth.

Socrates formulated his thought in an intellectual climate that was not much different from our own. He often had verbal sparring matches with the Sophists. The Sophists were clever rhetoricians who were known for their skill in argumentation. Their stock in trade was relativism and skepticism. They taught the sons of the well-to-do in Athens to advance arguments on either side of an issue by making fine distinctions in definitions. The Sophists did not advocate that there was any such thing as universal truth, rather, they argued that there is no certainty about anything. What counted was not the truth or logical soundness of your argument, but the ability to persuade regardless of the veracity of one’s argument.

Socrates battled against this line of thinking by his constant questioning in pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty. Socrates believed that a definition was “a clear and fixed concept.”3 He observed that “although particular events or things varied in some respects or passed away, there was something about them that was the same, that never varied, that never passed away, and this was their definition or their essential nature.”4 Thus, the essential nature (definition) of a rose remains even after the rose has wilted; the concept (ideal) of beauty also remains even after the rose is no longer beautiful. Socrates believed that the mind simultaneously recognizes two things when looking at a beautiful flower: it recognizes the particular flower that is in view, and connects that particular to the universal idea of Beauty. In this way, Socrates affirmed the reality of universal truths.

Consequently, if Socrates were to ask you “What is a beautiful flower?” or “What is a good act?” he would not be satisfied with an answer that pointed to a particular flower or a particular act. Because some particular thing may be called beautiful or good, that does not exhaust the idea of Beauty or Goodness. Socrates was always looking deeper than the external appearance of things. He was examining motives and searching for ideals. The definition of beauty is not contained in the single example of a flower, and the concept of goodness is not limited to one good act. If one could see beyond the external or temporal appearances of things and see truth, then one had acquired real knowledge.

Knowledge, for Socrates, had to do with the power of the mind to discover in facts the abiding elements that remain after the facts disappear.6 Facts can produce a variety of notions. If one limited knowledge to interpreted facts, he or she would conclude that there are no universal likenesses.7 Sophists built their careers on the assertion of this kind of relativism. Socrates, however, would not accept this kind of knowledge as being indicative of truth. Socrates believed that many different facts do not obscure the universal truth. He affirmed that different facts can yield clear and fixed concepts if one is willing to employ careful analysis and definition.8
By maintaining that there are universal truths in the face of the skepticism of his day, Socrates endorses a view with which Christians would agree wholeheartedly. There are many other ways in which the philosophy of Socrates and Plato is compatible with the basic presuppositions of a Christian world view. For example, Socrates believed that everything in the world had a function and a purpose. This coincides with the Christian belief that God created everything good, and that everything that God created has a function and a purpose that makes it valuable.

Socrates also believed that “there are many things in the universe, not because of some haphazard mixture, but because each thing does one thing best and all of them acting together make up the orderly universe.”9 Socrates seems to think that there is an order to the universe that is unmistakable. The Christian also sees this fact and attributes it to the sovereignty of God. Socrates made no such connection, but he does see the grand design of the universe.

There were, of course, some ways in which Socrates’ beliefs were not compatible with Christian beliefs. Socrates believed in moral absolutes, but did not have any concept that coincided with sin. He believed that people were basically good. According to Socrates, no one ever knowingly would indulge in vice or commit a wrong act. Knowledge was equated with virtue, and if one knew the good, he or she would certainly do it. Evil is associated with ignorance. These beliefs were rooted in Socrates understanding of human nature which is rather sophisticated and smacks of the Christian understanding of humans being made in the image of God without ever saying that.

Socrates believed that there is a “design plan” for a human being; there is a sense in which the fundamental structure of human nature is constant.10 If a person does anything that goes against the design plan he or she will harm him or herself. True happiness is found in knowledge of the good because it is only by doing what is good that human beings are able to avoid harming themselves and thus achieve a blissful existence. Doing any kind of moral evil, even if no one else ever finds out about it, will result in a damaged soul. Socrates thought that more than anything, the fulfilling of one’s function as a human being is to behave rationally.11 To be swayed in any way by emotions or “fleshly appetites” is to deny oneself true happiness.

In addition to his assessment of human nature, Plato also describes the attributes of “God.” It is not entirely clear whether the “God” that Plato is describing is thought to be a single being or if the attributes given are applicable to any of the gods found in Greek myth. One of the charges brought against Socrates at the trial that led to his death sentence was that he did not worship the gods whom the State worshipped, and he introduced new and unfamiliar religious practices.12 It is not exactly clear what substance, if any, there is to these charges. Plato’s description of “God” that is found in The Republic was written about twenty-five years after the death of Socrates and the fall of the Athenian government which coincidentally happened soon after Socrates condemnation and death.

The description of “God” that we find in Plato’s writings has points that are compatible with the Christian description of “God” and some that are not. Even though it is not biblical, Plato’s understanding of “God” seems to have been influential in the thought of many Christian theologians. Plato describes a “God” that is utterly transcendent and aloof. Plato’s “God” is wholly good, honest, chaste, non-violent, and not quarrelsome.13 The attribute that has perhaps caused the most controversy in Christian thought is Plato’s portrayal of “God” as immutable and impassible. Plato says that “God” is perfect in every way and cannot change because any change would have to be a change for the worse. God’s goodness and beauty are perfect, any change in that could only make “God” something less than good or beautiful.

It is this strict notion of immutability that seems to have influenced the thinking of some of the earlier Christian theologians. If this idea is taken to the extreme, the result is an image of God that is utterly unchangeable. For Christian theology, this causes problems because God is then neither able to be incarnate, nor is God able to interact with human beings in a meaningful way. Any interaction involves some kind of change. In Plato’s description, the transcendence of God is emphasized to the exclusion of any sense of God’s immanence, and this is contrary to the biblical portrayal of God.

Perhaps the most important contribution of Plato is his understanding of the Forms. Socrates had anticipated this idea of the Forms by holding that there is an absolute Good.14 Plato went beyond this to suggest that there are universals or general ideas that exist apart from the visible world. The world of the Forms constitutes a greater reality than what we are able to see and experience in this life. Plato’s understanding of the invisible realm being more real than the visible is one of the key factors that led to the conversion of Augustine as will be explained later. Plato’s description of the Forms is found in his Allegory of the Divided Line and his Simile of the Cave.
The Divided Line is a vertical line that is divided in to four sections A, B, C, and D. Section “A” is at the top of the line and represents “Intelligence” which is a full understanding that culminates in the vision of truth. The ultimate vision of the truth is an understanding of the Form of the Good which is the highest point on the line. Section “B” represents “Reason,” or the procedure of mathematics, purely deductive and uncritical of its assumptions. Section “C” represents “Belief.” Belief is inclusive of commonsense beliefs on matters both moral and physical, which are a fair and practical guide to life but have not been fully thought out. The bottom section, “D,” represents “Illusion.” Illusion represents all of the “secondhand impressions and opinions of which the minds of ordinary people are full.”15 As you move up the line the level of “being” also increases.

The Simile of the Cave provides a narrative to explain the concept of the Forms. In this example, Socrates describes a scenario of what it is like for a person who has come to the realization of the true nature of reality by understanding the form. He says that the reality that we experience here and now is like watching shadows on the wall of a cave. In his story, there are people who have been chained to the floor and situated so that they can only see forward. On the wall in front of them, they see the shadows of images that look like trees or animals or other objects that we see in the world. The objects that they see are projected from a shelf or balcony-like area behind the “prisoners.” Up behind the chained people are other people who have built a fire for a light source to use for projection of the shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. These people are carrying something like “cardboard cutouts” of objects that they pass in front of the fire so that the images of these cutouts is projected on the wall in front of the prisoners

Socrates describes what it would be like if one of these prisoners were to be able to get out of his chains and turn around to see the reality of what is going on in the cave. Then if that person were to get up and go out toward the mouth of the cave, he would have to adjust slowly to the light. When he finally came outside of the cave and saw the reality of what is in the world, then he would know how truly inadequate the shadows in the cave were. And when he finally became accustomed to the light enough to see the sun, the source of all light, he would understand true goodness.

In this simile, the men chained in the cave represent the majority of the human race, the shadows on the wall in front of them are how they see reality without enlightenment. The person who gets out of the chains and moves out of the cave and into the light is a philosopher who is willing to struggle to see reality as it is. The world outside the cave is the world of the Forms—the real world. The sun that sheds light on the world is the Form of the Good—the highest of the Forms.

Socrates says the job of the philosopher is then try to go back into the cave to tell the prisoners what he has found. However, this is difficult because the prisoners do not want to move. They are satisfied with their pseudo-reality in the cave, they are comfortable in their chains and do not want to leave. They do not want to go through the pain that it takes to go out into the light, to see the sun, and to understand reality in its most pure form.
The parallels to the Christian faith and the work of an evangelist are readily evident to this simile. The greatest reality is that of heaven--that which we cannot see. The prisoners represent those who have not heard the good news so that they can be released from the chains of their sin to see the light of salvation. It is difficult work because the sinner is often comfortable where he or she is.

Socrates and Plato were not Christians, nor could they have been since they lived long before Christ came into the world; however, they provided a framework for thinking that served as the standard for centuries. They believed in universals and absolute Truth. They were realists who took empirical data into account, but believed that there was more to reality than what met the eye. These were significant contributions to philosophy that influenced other thinkers heavily. The framework that Plato provided for thought lasted until the Enlightenment. One of those most influenced by the Platonic mode of thinking was Augustine of Hippo who is regarded by some as the greatest theologian of the Christian church

The Pre-Modern Period: Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas

Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas are three of the most significant thinkers in the period of time before the Enlightenment. Each of them made significant contributions to philosophy and theology. These two areas of academic thought were not considered to be separate disciplines in their era. Theology was considered the "Queen of the Sciences"—the discipline which held all the others together in such a way that they make sense. It was commonly believed that God not only existed but that he ordered the universe and was the font of all meaning and knowledge.

Augustine of Hippo began his academic career as a rhetor. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, and Augustine was headed in that direction, but that all changed when Augustine was converted. He went on to become a bishop in the Christian church who sought to clarify the faith through his writings.

Augustine’s two greatest struggles in his conversion to Christianity were materialism and the problem of evil. He overcame the first of these by following the advice of the Platonists in regard to reality. He came to the realization that that which is most real is that which cannot be seen. He solved the second question by coming to the notion of evil as a defect or privation of good. After his conversion, he came to see that all knowledge and understanding originated with God.

Augustine coined the phrase “faith seeking understanding,” as a motto for thought. This came from his reading of the Septuagint translation of Isaiah 5:7. Augustine always presupposed the existence of God before trying to make sense of the world around him. Much of his theology is based on Platonic ideals, but he made it distinctly Christian. His understanding of God and his interpretation of the Trinity went far beyond anything that he could have gleaned from Plato.

Augustine’s writings and his philosophical views were probably more influential than any other thinker’s for centuries to come. He, like Plato, was a realist. He believed that the highest reality belonged to a realm that was not visible. He believed that one could attain knowledge by means of empirical observation, but that the greatest and most sure knowledge came through revelation. His world view presupposed God as the greatest reality. All knowledge and truth followed from this fact.

Anselm, an eleventh century Benedictine monk who eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury, is best known for his ontological argument for the existence of God. This argument turns on the assumption that one cannot think of any being greater than God. It is obvious that the idea of God is presupposed in order to advance the argument at all. The merits of this argument have been debated throughout the ages, but the point being made here is that faith precedes understanding in Anselm’s method of thinking. Anselm begins with faith and then seeks to understand. He makes this statement in the second chapter of his Proslogion: “And so, Lord, do thou who dost give understanding to faith, give me, so far as thou knowest it to be profitable, to understand that thou art as we believe; and that thou art that which we believe.”16 In Anselm’s thought as in Augustine’s, belief in God is more certain than empirical knowledge.

Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest thinkers of the middle ages, is the theologian most revered by the Roman Catholic Church. His massive Summa Theologica is still the theological standard for the Catholic Church. He offered five ways to prove the existence of God, three cosmological, one moral, and one teleological. These arguments were to establish a foundation for theistic belief, not a proof for the Christian religion. Aquinas believed that biblical study and revelation were required to understand God in his fullness. The cosmological arguments are arguments from motion, the nature of efficient cause, and possibility and necessity. His moral argument comes from the gradation found in things, and teleological argument is taken from the governance of the world.17 These arguments are convincing for anyone who is willing to look at them from the perspective that was dominant at the time; namely, that faith precedes understanding. The arguments are circular, and are not respected in modern philosophical parlance as being anything but circular arguments in which that which is to be proven is already assumed in the premises. However, this was not the case in the thirteenth century when they were respected as valid arguments by many thinkers of the day.

This pre-modern way of thinking which was codified and structured by Plato held empirical observation to be a reliable way to gain knowledge. There was also the sense that a greater reality lay beyond the visible world. For Plato, this was the world of the Forms, and for Christian thinkers, this higher reality was constituted by the heavenly Kingdom of God. Experiential knowledge was trusted and thought to be true, and was secondary to the higher knowledge gained through revelation of the invisible world. For Christian thinkers, God was at the center of knowledge; He was understood to be the font of all that could be considered true or right or beautiful. Human understanding followed from and, in many ways, was a result of faith. The pursuit of knowledge was marked by faith seeking understanding. This model for thought would be completely reversed with the advent of the Enlightenment.

Modern Period: Descartes, Nietzsche, Camus

As time went on, thinkers began to move away from the paradigm of thought that had ruled philosophy and theology for so many centuries. Skepticism began to seep into mainstream academia and philosophy. As knowledge about the physical world increased, certainty about that knowledge became more and more suspect. Empirical knowledge was doubted because it was noted that the senses could give faulty information. The invisible realm was doubted because it was not readily available to the senses and could not be rationally demonstrated. As the invisible realm came into question so did the existence of God.

In response to this wave of skepticism and unbelief, Rene’ Descartes sought to come up with a concrete starting point against Renaissance skepticism. He also wanted to deal with the emerging problem of atheism. By all accounts, Descartes was a sincere Christian who was trying to legitimize the discussion of God in philosophical discourse. However, the result of Descartes’ attempt to reestablish thought about God in academic discourse was a disaster for Christian thought. It not only failed as a proof for the existence of God, it also affirmed the human mind as being the center of all truth and reality. His maxim, “I think; therefore, I am,” effectively places man at the center of reality. Once he finds himself at the center of reality, he then works his way to a belief that there must be a God. This turns the paradigm of the pre-modern era upside-down by working from a position of “understanding seeking faith.”

His attempt at proving the existence of God tries to meet the skepticism of his day by incorporating doubts into his proof. He finds that it is possible to doubt almost everything, in large part, because he dreams, and his dreams present what seem to be real to him even though he is convinced that his dreams are not offering true reality to him.18 Thus, he concludes that he cannot trust what he perceives because he might be dreaming. He doubts that his senses can be offering him accurate information. He doubts the existence of space, time, arithmetic, and geometry.19 He doubts the existence of a good God and instead postulates an evil genius who is constantly deceiving him in regard to his perception of reality.20

Descartes finds that there is only one thing that he cannot doubt. He exclaims, “the statement, ‘I am, I exist,’ is necessarily true every time it is conceived in my mind. In other words, ‘I think, therefore, I am.”21 From this point, Descartes begins to rebuild certainty in his senses, his thought, and finally God. In doing this he places confidence in the “light of nature” to guide him to objective reality and truth.22

Descartes wanted to make God the foundation of his philosophical system, but in the final analysis he fails because his enterprise was more methodological than existential. Thus, the project he started becomes unraveled later when thinkers used it without an existential Christian faith. His argument is fallacious and can be easily disassembled by even an amateur logician. He also has placed understanding ahead of faith in the realm of epistemology, and this proves to be a more devastating problem.

As the skepticism of the Enlightenment Era continued to take hold in the consciousness of culture, philosophical materialism and atheism became more prevalent. Materialism pushed to its logical conclusion yields nihilism. Nihilism leads to despair. People learned that the Earth was not the central axis of the universe, but only a small planet revolving around a sun in a rather insignificant solar system in an ordinary galaxy. The apparent capriciousness of nature and the harsh realities of human existence added to the feelings of helplessness. The loss of God from public consciousness also meant a loss of an anchor for meaning and truth in culture and society.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was one of the first thinkers who was willing to carry the premises of philosophical naturalism to their logical consequences and deal with the results without flinching. He faces the abyss of nihilism and proposes that humanity can overcome despair by the sheer power of will. In his work, he provides the foundations for existentialism and post-modernism.

Nietzsche pronounced to the world, “God is dead.” In making this proclamation, he was not acknowledging the death of a personal God (whom he did not believe existed in the first place); rather, he was making an announcement as a historian of ideas “who sees ideas as forms of life, as vehicles for the articulation of central attitudes.”23 He was saying that the idea of God, a central human ideal which makes it possible for man to seek refuge in some entity which takes up, absolves, and dissolves human disappointments and disillusionments may not be the right ideal.24 He thought that the main reason that the idea of God had gone bad was that it had been coupled with the idea of otherworldliness. It is the otherworldliness that leads to escapism and steers people away from “effort, exertion, and creation to mere receptivity, passivity, and conformity.”25 By affirming the death of God, he was saying that the whole culture had gone bad and was drowning in nihilism.

He resolves that if we are capable of destroying such a noble idea as God, then we can create a higher ideal. With God gone, man himself must undertake the tasks which previously had been relegated to God.26 Human beings must create for themselves an inspiration and reality that is worth pursuing and living for. This is the “Will to Power.” The Will to Power is essentially an affirmation of existence, a saying yes to life. The Will to Power seeks joy.”27 Pleasure and power are closely linked for Nietzsche. “A pleasurable state is one in which one is able to satisfy a given urge or prompting.”28 An individual who exhibits the Will to Power is one who can obtain pleasure by overcoming and mastering pain.

The one who can exert the Will to Power is the ubermensch (overman). This is a very inclusive term for Nietzsche and describes one who is able to “master one’s fate, to utilize one’s talents to the highest degree, to enhance to the maximum one’s creative potentialities, and to spend one’s life in service to a difficult, personally chosen goal.”29 The overman is one who goes beyond what human beings are today to create a new and superior individual of him or herself. One of the capacities essential to this process is reason. For Nietzsche, “reason is always an individual’s reason, and it is not separable from other features and aspects of a living being.”30 The quality of life for an individual is judged by rational discernment.

In Nietzsche’s assessment, a strong person is one who has mastery over him or herself and his or her total environment. There is no happenstance or accident. Everything that happens is a result of deliberate choice and self-control.

The coming together of the dynamic, creative impulse with its satisfaction and fulfillment is for Nietzsche the final good and value of existence. The great achievement of superior individuals is that they succeed in affirming the world through their creativity.31

The strong person creates a world for him or herself that is worthy of their own worship. The world created by the individual is full of meaning and excitement.

Nietzsche knows that the search for every higher level of existence will end in frequent failure, but this has to be accepted as part of the price of striving for joy. The wise person will be able to laugh at failure and never succumb to depression in such a way that he or she is immobilized. The overman will succeed in creating meaning for him or herself and will master fate by taking charge of his or her own destiny.

In Nietzsche, we see that the center of meaning has been firmly placed in the hands of each individual. Each person is responsible for creating his or her own meaning and truth. The concept of God and the concept of objective truth have been jettisoned in favor of a subjective truth and meaning. The individual has taken over the function that God served for society prior to the Enlightenment. Nietzsche’s philosophy has become the philosophy of modern society. We are no longer in a culture that begins from faith and seeks understanding, nor are we in a culture that begins with understanding and moves toward an explanation of faith, we are in a culture that has abandoned the idea of God and faith altogether. The measure of meaning is found in the strength of an individual.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) represents a modern existentialist who follows Nietzsche in the struggle to create meaning in a world without God. In his essay, “The Absurdity of Human Existence,” Camus presents his audience with the “one truly serious philosophical problem.”32 As it turns out, this most urgent of philosophical questions is whether or not one should commit suicide. He says that killing yourself amounts to confessing “that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it . . . It is merely confessing that life ‘is not worth the trouble.’”33 He states that life is never easy and that we keep on living, in large part, out of habit. Thus, “dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering.”34
Camus sets forth the absurdity of human existence. When there is no God, no purpose, no meaning in life, then there is only the absurdity of existence. Human life is journey of pain going nowhere. We live a life of pain and ceaseless suffering and then we die and become dust, nothing. Suicide is the ultimate acceptance of this dismal understanding of life.

Camus’ solution to the abyss of meaninglessness is to revolt against the absurdity of life. He concludes that “living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it.”35 We must recognize the uselessness and meaninglessness of life and revolt against it. He states that revolt is “one of the only coherent philosophical positions.”36 The revolt that we must pursue is that of scorn.

Camus tells the myth of Sisyphus, a mortal who offends the gods and is sentenced to the “unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.”37 He was to roll a boulder up a mountain, but just as he reached the summit, the boulder would roll back down to the plain and Sisyphus would then have to walk down and push it up again. His existence is the paradigm of absurdity and meaningless labor. He is “the absurd hero.”38

The part of this myth that interests Camus the most is the moment in which Sisyphus turns to walk back down the mountain to face his torment again. “That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness.”39 It is at this moment that Sisyphus is superior to his fate because he realizes and contemplates “the whole extent of his wretched condition.”40 Sisyphus understands well that his life is terrible and futile, and he scorns it with all that is within him. Camus states that “there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn,”41 and he concludes that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”42

Thus, the meaning that the atheistic existentialist gives us for life is that of scorn and hatred for the meaninglessness of life, but, of course, that usually only yields a grumpy individual who has a bad attitude. There is no hope here, just the strength of the individual being asserted against the cold hard world. In the face of the absurdity of human existence we must embrace the banality of life. The reward of this is that the individual become the master of his or her own fate, in spite of the fact that fate has already dealt us a pitiful lot in life.
The meaninglessness of life is hard to escape for the atheistic existentialist. If there is no meaning, then there is no truth. Standards, morals, and objectivity don’t matter anymore, even if they do exist in some form or other. Meaning is left to the individual to create, but the creation of meaning seems even less hopeful than it did for Nietzsche. At least Nietzsche believed that the overman could make something of his or her life that constituted meaning. The atheistic existentialist is left to deal with life on its own terms. A revolt that consists mainly of scorn is the only weapon that the existentialist has against the meaningless absurdity of human existence. It is the influence of existentialist philosophy that allows for the easy disregard of anything that resembles a universal standard of truth.

Postmodernism: Rorty, Fish

Postmodernism is the direct result of the loss of meaning and truth in academic discourse. Postmodernists like Richard Rorty claim that “truth claims are just tools that ‘help us get what we want.’”43 He has also said that “truth is whatever your colleagues will let you get away with.” Stanley Fish “argues that all statements of principle are really just expressions of personal preferences, and therefore, an appeal to principle is no more than a power play, an attempt to impose one’s own private preferences on others in the guise of ‘objective truths.’”44 Truth, for Postmodernists is a myth that is used by one person to gain power over another.

For some like Rorty and James Berlin language has become the center of meaning. There is no value-neutral language. Rhetoric is epistemic; that is, language creates knowledge.45 However, the knowledge created is subjective and does not create objective meaning for everyone. The words of language themselves are at the root of meaning and value, the center of knowledge. Yet, the same words can have different meanings for different people. Thus, the kind of knowledge that is produced by rhetoric is not terribly impressive and is certainly not universal. Knowledge produced by language is limited by the subjectivity of the individual.
Another example of postmodernism gone awry in modern academia is modern literary theory. In modern theory, there is no consideration of the original intent of the author nor is there any recognition that a text may have a particular meaning. The only meaning of the text is the meaning that the reader brings to the text. The “truth” of the text is entirely up to the individual. Authors such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault46 have led the advance in this very subjective push in literary theory.

It is disconcerting to see the extent to which many of the academic elite embrace postmodern philosophy in their thinking and scholarship. (Richard Rorty now teaches at Stanford and Stanley Fish is at Duke University). The meaninglessness of life is unabashedly embraced. The task of living life is an every human for him or herself endeavor. Meaning is solely up to the individual to create because there is no center of meaning outside the individual by which any proposition may be judged.

Philosophical Hope in the Era of Postmodernism

Alvin Plantinga affirms truth and meaning in life by restoring a rational belief in God. Plantinga agrees that the classical arguments for God fail as coercive arguments. But he asks, “why should they be taken like that? After all, scarcely any arguments for any serious philosophical conclusion qualify as real demonstrations.”47 He challenges anyone to take their favorite argument for any serious philosophical conclusion and find it to be completely agreeable with everyone. It is impossible. He states, “there will be plenty of people who don’t accept the argument, and (they) are not thereby shown to be either unusually dense or intellectually dishonest.”48

In a bold move, he asks “Why suppose that the reasonableness of belief depends on good theistic arguments?”49 Is there a good non-circular, non-question begging argument for the fact that the world is more than five minutes old? No not really. But we hold that our belief in the past is rational or justified even in the absence of such an argument. Why then do we need a non-circular argument for God? Why can’t belief in God be properly basic?50 Thus, Plantinga proposes that having a “faith” in the existence of God is a properly held basic belief.

Nicholas Wolterstorff adds to this argument by pointing to the long tradition that our knowledge and awareness of God does not come by way of inference from other beliefs that we have, but much more directly.51 John Calvin held that God created us with a sensus divinitatis, a sense of divinity, or an awareness of God. Calvin’s contention is that we are made in such a way that we have a strong tendency or disposition to form beliefs about him. “When a human is functioning properly from a cognitive point of view, she will form beliefs about God--God has created all this: God is my Maker; I owe allegiance and obedience--in a wide variety of situations.”52 These beliefs are not based on arguments or evidentially based on other beliefs. These beliefs will be accepted as properly basic beliefs.53

Hope for Education

Just as Plantinga and Wolterstorff provide hope for philosophy in a postmodern world, classical and Christian education offers an answer to the malaise that we see in educational theory and practice. Because belief in God is affirmed, universal standards and objective truths are accepted. Life and learning are seen to be meaningful and good. There is purpose and direction in classical education.

In educational practices like the whole language method of teaching reading, it is easy to see how postmodern theory has crept in and done away with an objective standard. Whole language theory teaches students to read by using context clues around an unkown word or by using illustrations to determine the written word. Thus, if the word “h-o-r-s-e” is read as “pony” and there would be no correction because the “concepts and the picture are about the same.” However, we have taken a giant step toward teaching a child that there is no truth.54 Letters are the most basic building blocks of written language. Each letter of the English alphabet has a specific sound or set of sounds attached to it. Letters are symbols that, when placed in a particular sequence, have a specified meaning. That specified meaning corresponds to a specific truth about the world in which we live. If we deny this and take away the correspondence of symbol to meaning and meaning to truth, then we are either consciously or inadvertently teaching relativism.

That is why we teach a phonics based reading curriculum, because symbols have meaning and meaning is inextricably linked to truth. That is why we don’t use a creative spelling curriculum or allow fuzzy math to be a part of our pedagogical method. That is why we believe that a child’s self-esteem comes from true accomplishment in a challenging academic environment rather than a pat on the back for average or below average work done in a classroom geared to make sure that the lowliest of students “succeeds.”

Classical and Christian education stands against postmodernism and postmodern theories of education that allow for relativism and subjective truths. We need to be dogmatic in the sense that we must be committed to ideas that are true. As classical educators in a postmodern environment, we are diametrically opposed to much of what the academic world is espousing and practicing, and we need to keep it that way for the sake of the children we educate.

ENDNOTES
1. John Leo, “Naked Came the Coeds,” U.S. News & World Report (March 11, 2002): 59.
2. Chuck Colson, “Pushing the (Moral) Limits,” Jubilee Extra (March 2002): 7.
3. Samuel Enoch Stumpf, Philosophy: History and Problems, Third edition (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1983), 38.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 39.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 40.
10. Ibid., 41.
11. Ibid., 40.
12. Ibid., 42.
13. Plato, The Republic, 379c, 382e-383a, 380c, 377d-378b, and 378b-378d.
14. Stumpf, Introduction to Philosophy, 56.
15. Plato, The Republic, 2nd ed., tr. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin Books, 1987), 249.
16. Anselm, “The Ontological Argument, from Proslogium,” in Reason and Responsibility, Joel Feinberg, ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1965), 6.
17. Thomas Aquinas, The Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House; London: Burns and Oates, 1945), 22-23.
18. Rene’ Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, I, 19.
19. Ibid., I, 20.
20. Ibid., I, 22-23.
21. Ibid., II, 25.
22. Ibid., III, 38, 40.
23. Konstantin Kolenda, Philosophy’s Journey: A Historical Introduction (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1974), 235.
24. Ibid., 237.
25. Ibid., 237-38.
26. Ibid., 238-39.
27. Ibid., 241.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., 239.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid., 241.
32. Albert Camus, “The Absurdity of Human Existence,” in Philosophy: The Basic Issues, E.D. Klemke, A. David Kline, and Robert Hollinger, eds. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 360.
33. Ibid., 361.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 365.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 369.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., 370.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid., 371.
43. Colson, Charles and Nancy Pearcey, How Now Shall We Live? (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1999), 94.
44. Ibid., 24-25.
45. “A Brief History of Rhetoric and Composition,” The Bedford Bibliography for Teachers of Writing. http://www.bedfordbooks.com/bb/history.html.
46. Cf. Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976); A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.
47. Alvin Plantinga, “Belief in God,” in Perspectives in Philosophy, Michael Boylan ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers, 1993), 393.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 402.
50. Ibid., 403.
51. Ibid., 405.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. This particular example generated questions and concerns from some teachers at the conference who teach reading. The example was used to illustrate the correlation between symbols, meaning, and truth, not necessarily to make a definitive statement about teaching reading. That being said, I think that it is absolutely necessary to have phonics instruction as part of the process of teaching reading to children. We use the Sing, Spell, Read, and Write Curriculum at North Hills Classical Academy and have found it to be an effective way to teach basic reading skills. Our students are all reading before they exit kindergarten, and they are reading trade books by the time they reach first grade. Our teaching of reading program has phonics as its base, but is not merely about drilling letter sounds.