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"Crucial Issues for Stanley Grenz's Linguistically Constructed Theology"
© by R. Scott Smith, Ph.D.
Biola University
Presented at the Evangelical Philosophical Society meeting on Thursday, Nov. 15, 2001, at 9:50
a.m., at the Evangelical Theological Society 2001 Conference
In their book, Beyond Foundationalism,
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Stanley Grenz and John Franke seek to develop
a non-foundational, postmodern approach to theology that avoids what they think are critical
philosophical errors that plague both liberal and conservative Christian theology. They accept as
axiomatic that we have seen "the demise of foundationalism," and along with it the myth that we
can stand in an epistemically neutral vantage point and form a "single, universal set of criteria by
means of which we can judge definitively the epistemic status of all beliefs" (47). In rather
thorough fashion, they spell out what such a theology should look like, and in that process they
cite approvingly of the constructionist thought of the later Wittgenstein, Nancey Murphy, J.L.
Austin, and Peter Berger.
In keeping with their shift to a postmodern theology, Grenz and Franke contend that
theologians should adopt (a) an emphasis on particular, local stories, as opposed to
metanarratives; (b) a constructionist view of truth, as opposed to a correspondence one; (b) and
(c) a constructionist view of reality, as opposed to metaphysical realism. Accordingly, they
believe that "we do not inhabit the `world-in-itself'; instead, we live in a linguistic world of our
own making" (53). Further, they do not believe that we can escape from our particular social
context and achieve a "transcultural intellectual vantage point" (151). Thus, it seems that Grenz
and Franke presuppose a tight relationship between language and the world, especially in light of
their emphasis on the locality and particularity of all theology.
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Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context
(Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001).