James K. A. Smith’s latest book continues his longstanding project of sympathetic Christian engagement with postmodernist philosophy. On this occasion Smith, professor of philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, seeks to play the role of defense attorney for “relativism”; more precisely, the philosophy of pragmatism as propounded by the controversial American philosopher Richard Rorty. His central thesis is repeated in different forms throughout the book: pragmatism is a philosophy centered on the recognition of our dependence, finitude, and contingency; thus Christians, who acknowledge the dependence, finitude, and contingency of the creation, should be sympathetic rather than hostile toward pragmatism. But embracing pragmatism also means repenting of representationalist realism: the idea that truth consists in a correspondence or match between the “inside” world of our thoughts and the “outside” world of objects existing independently of our thoughts.
The opening chapter sets up the problem Smith seeks to solve—or rather to subvert. Christians fear “the specter of relativism” because they think Christianity requires a commitment to “absolute truth,” which relativism repudiates. Relativism and its defenders are therefore enemies of the Christian faith. The term “relativism” is often poorly defined and has been used to label various views, some more vulnerable to refutation than others. Rather than deal with sophomoric types of relativism (“true for you, not true for me”) Smith proposes to engage with a serious and sophisticated form of relativism, namely, contemporary pragmatism.
Smith’s positive case for a “Christian relativism” unfolds in the subsequent four chapters. Chapter 2 lays a foundation by expounding Ludwig Wittgenstein’s mature views on language and meaning. Wittgenstein argues against a naïve referentialist view of meaning, contending instead that the meaning of a word consists in the way it is used in a particular “form of life.” Meaning is therefore always relative to a social context and dependent on a community of language users. Armed with these observations, Smith concludes that if our language has any referential function at all, it must be contingent on human communities and social conventions.
Who’s Afraid of Relativism? Community, Contingency, and Creaturehood
James K. A. Smith
Who’s Afraid of Relativism? Community, Contingency, and Creaturehood
James K. A. Smith
Chapter 3 invites us to give a more sympathetic hearing to Richard Rorty, the philosopher “realists love to hate.” Smith contends that Rorty’s pragmatism is “not essentially antithetical to Christian faith” but amounts to “a philosophy of creaturehood that ought to be embraced by Christians” (73–74). Rorty’s argument for pragmatism is subtle and controversial, but the upshot is this: all philosophical claims need to be recognized as historically contingent, the “correspondence” theory of truth must give way to a pragmatist conception of truth, and our notions of truth, justification, and knowledge must be reconceived in terms of social practices. According to Smith, Rorty simply wants us to see that truth is socially conditioned and that we need to come to terms with our finitude and historical contingency. His pragmatism just is a philosophy of contingency and dependence; thus it has a deep affinity with biblical Christianity.
Chapter 4 draws from the work of Robert Brandom to address the worry that a pragmatist philosophy would leave no place for rationality and logic, thus preventing us from offering a reasoned justification for our faith. Chapter 5 proposes that a form of “Christian pragmatism” has already appeared in the form of the postliberal theology of George Lindbeck’s The Nature of Doctrine (1984). Space constraints forbid commentary on Smith’s arguments here; suffice it to say that they presuppose the conclusions of the earlier chapters and seek to further allay the concerns of readers about embracing a “Christian relativism.”
Caricatures of Defenders
There is much to admire about Smith’s sympathetic interaction with these postmodern thinkers. Such writers have important insights that can expose our unwitting deference to modernist epistemologies and illuminate various aspects of Christian faith and practice. His overall project is a worthy and worthwhile one. Nevertheless, I have to raise some criticisms of this particular offering.
In the first place, I wish Smith had been as charitable and even-handed in his treatment of realism as he is in his treatment of pragmatism. Who’s Afraid of Relativism? is laced with caricatures of realism and its defenders (e.g., realists think that “truth is a mechanism by which concepts in our heads magically hook onto entities outside of our heads,” 27), false dichotomies (e.g., between pragmatism and naïve referentialism), and pejorative descriptions (e.g., the correspondence relation is dismissed several times as “magical” or “mythical”).
Second, his arguments in the early chapters don’t seem to warrant the sort of paradigm-challenging conclusions he thinks they do. Wittgenstein deflates a narrow, reductionistic form of representationalism, but everything Smith claims about the context-relativity and social-dependence of language seems quite compatible with a realist account of truth, such as one defended by William Alston in A Realist Conception of Truth (1996).
Third, it’s regrettable Smith gives the reader no hint that Rorty’s views on meaning, truth, and knowledge are deeply embedded in a particular worldview—one antithetical to the biblical worldview. Rorty understands his pragmatist epistemology to be a consistent outworking of a Darwinian naturalist view of human origins: all truth and knowledge claims are radically contingent because every aspect of human life is historically accidental and ungoverned by any transcendent norms or ends. It is therefore jarring to find Smith suggesting that Rorty offers us a “philosophy of creaturehood” that “recognizes our creational dependence” (74, 115). On the contrary, Rorty embraces the conclusions he does precisely because he rejects any doctrine of creation. Rorty’s is a philosophy of autonomy par excellence.
Fourth, the book lacks clarity and precision at the very points where clarity and precision are most needed. For example, while Smith evidently wants us to impress on us our contingency, he’s unclear about exactly what this contingency consists in. It’s not enough to insist that “X is contingent”; we need to ask, “On what exactly is X contingent—and in what respects?” Obviously those who hold to the doctrines of creation and providence want to affirm that every aspect of our lives—including our speaking and knowing—is contingent on God. But that’s not at all equivalent to affirming that every aspect of our lives is contingent on our social contexts, conventions, and histories—in other words, contingent on us.
In the end it’s hard to make out what Smith’s “Christian relativism” actually amounts to. If it’s the comparatively modest claim that the meanings of our truth-claims and the warrants for our beliefs are typically contingent and relative to a social context, that’s a fairly tame kind of “relativism” that is entirely compatible with realism. On the other hand, if Smith wants us to embrace the more radical claim that all truths and intellectual norms are contingent and socially conditioned, then all bets are off.
The epilogue suggests that Smith is really advocating the tame kind, in which case my complaint comes to this: the book is mistitled. Instead of asking “Who’s Afraid of Relativism?” it should be asking “Who’s Afraid of Relativity?” But the answer to that question is: hardly anyone. Such a title would have been more appropriate but far less provocative and interesting.