Five Things I learned from Jon Harris’s Conversation with Bill Roach About Standpoint Epistemology

There are three ways to come to know or understand reality. These are experience, reason, and revelation. As a boy, if I touched a bright red element on an electric stove, I would jerk my hand back in pain. I would have learned through experience not to touch it. If I saw my brother Tom touch a bright red burner and saw him grimace, shout out in pain, and quickly pull his hand back, I could reason that touching the burner is a decidedly unpleasant experience, and one to be avoided. Finally, suppose my mother had said to me, “Mark, when you see a burner on an electric stove that’s bright red, don’t touch it! If you do, you’ll injure your hand and wish you’d heeded my warning!” Hearing and understanding my mother’s words, I would have learned through revelation that touching a glowing red element on an electric stove is harmful. While experience and reason are helpful and useful, if the source of revelation is  fully reliable and trustworthy, revelation has clear advantages over coming to know truth exclusively through experience and/or reason.¹
—paraphrased from Dr. Mark Corts, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, from 1963 until 2002—

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Key points: Standpoint epistemology is unbiblical. It leads, not to truth, but to misinformation and misunderstanding. Christians should reject its use and application and should seek to help others understand why it is problematic.

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In a brief article I wrote in 2014 titled “Discernment Needed,” I began by introducing my readers to a man named Fred.

Fred was very much alive but was convinced he was dead. When his psychiatrist asked him if dead men bleed, Fred said no. The doctor promptly stuck Fred’s finger with a needle, causing blood to come forth. “Wow!” said Fred. “Dead men really do bleed, after all!”

Unfortunately, Fred’s approach to knowledge is like that of a growing number of Christians today. This is true to a large extent because of the increasing influence of the social justice movement within the church.

Against this backdrop, I am thankful for Jon Harris and his “Conversations That Matter” (CTM) podcast. On Sunday, February 23, 2020, Jon released an interview he’d conducted with Dr. Bill Roach, President of the International Society of Christian Apologetics.

The two theologians talked about a concept called “standpoint epistemology.” As we soon will discover, the term epistemology has to do with acquiring knowledge, or coming to an understanding of what is true. Standpoint epistemology it is tied to the social justice movement. This reality makes this CTM podcast a must-watch for every believer. I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this page.

In this post, I’m going to share five things I learned from listening to this particular edition of Conversations That Matter; but first let’s learn a bit more about the term epistemology.

What Is Epistemology?

According to an informative article at conservapedia.com,

Epistemology is the analysis of the nature of knowledge, how we know, what we can and cannot know, and how we can know that there are things we know we cannot know. In other words, it is the academic term associated with [the] study of how we conclude that certain things are true.

In his Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, Millard J. Erickson defines “epistemology” this way: “A theory of knowledge or an inquiry into how we gain knowledge.”²

What, then, is “standpoint epistemology”? Beware! Standpoint epistemology is the means by which “social justice warriors approach truth.” And ironically—yet not surprisingly, given the social justice narrative—standpoint epistemology (STEP) doesn’t really lead to truth at all, but to opinions. Apparently that’s exactly the way some social justice warriors (SJWs), even many within the evangelical church, want it.

Here are five things I learned about STEP from Jon Harris’s podcast.

First, standpoint epistemology is a form of relativism.

Relativism, you may remember, is the philosophy that an individual can make up his or her own truth and that all “versions” of truth are equally valid. This presupposes that truth isn’t objectively discovered but can be and is created by each person. This idea is implied by the union of the words standpoint, indicating an individual or group perspective that potentially differs from that of other persons or groups, and epistemology, a word representing truth. Relativism is an idea that may sound good but that can be misleading and even deadly. As Scripture tells us, “There is a way that seems right to a man, [b]ut its end is the way of death.”

Second, standpoint epistemology is self-contradictory.

To genuinely believe that all differing viewpoints can be true is to throw the concept of absolute truth over the cliff. Yet it’s unlikely social justice crusaders will admit that STEP does this. Instead they will say that some viewpoints carry greater weight than others. Which ones? In answering this question, the social justice warrior (SJW) will point to the perspectives of people and groups the social justice movement says have been victimized by an oppressive, “white supremacist” culture. Those, say the SJW, are the perspectives or standpoints that carry greater weight and that hone in on the truth. 

This approach is self-contradictory. It cannot stand on its own. The assumption that some perspectives are more valid than others cuts against the idea that a viewpoint or standpoint can be trusted to a greater degree than reality itself (objective reality, remember, is a concept that STEP jettisons at the very outset), as well as the idea that all viewpoints are equal. You see, if you have viewpoints only, you have no basis or standard by which to test the validity of any of them. All you have are differing opinions. This makes the assumption that one perspective is more credible than others nothing more than another viewpoint. As such, it actually should not carry any more weight than any other idea.

Third, standpoint epistemology is a favorite tool of social justice crusaders because it advances the social justice narrative.

Why would SJWs uphold the perspectives of those deemed oppressed as having a corner on truth? Because this is what the social justice movement teaches, and it’s what critical race theory (CRT) teaches. CRT is a favorite social justice ideology. Those who have been oppressed must be heard, listened to, and heeded, say SJWs, because they have been oppressed (or, more to the point of reality), because they have been deemed to have been oppressed by whites and by something whites never can abandon — “white privilege.” As we said in a previous post, this narrative says that white people

need to repent of their “whiteness” and reject their status of “privilege.” In turn, blacks and other minorities need to be given privileges they’ve previously been denied—to compensate for the supposed oppression they’ve endured. Never mind that slavery was abolished long ago, that lynchings no longer are practiced, and that Jim Crow laws have been overturned. Never mind that, generally speaking, 21^st-century Americans are not racists. Despite all these things, CRT declares whites guilty for sins of the distant past and contends blacks are victims deserving of compensation for oppression they did not directly experience. A very short presentation titled “Some Things You Need to Know About Critical Race Theory” provides some additional helpful information.

Can you see now why SJWs and the tools they use, including standpoint epistemology, have to reject objective truth to further their movement? Objective, unbiased truth is a roadblock that hinders and thwarts advancement of the social justice narrative. This is not to say that racism doesn’t exist in any form; nor is it to say that we ought to ignore it whenever it rears its ugly head. It is to agree with liberal black educator Orlando Patterson on this point:

America…is now the least racist white-majority society in the world; has a better record of legal protection of minorities than any other society, white or black; offers more opportunities to a greater number of black persons than any other society, including all those of Africa.

Patterson said this, by the way, in 1991!

Fourth, standpoint epistemology is subjective.

We have established this already, but this point is worthy of careful consideration. Because it is subjective, STEP elevates emotions over facts. It values experience to a greater degree than truth. It embraces using one’s heart to assess a situation without using one’s head. STEP also distorts the meaning of authentic compassion by divorcing it from objective truth.

We see this in the evangelical social justice warrior’s approach to biblical interpretation.

• • • Jesus was a refugee and was homeless, the SJW tells us. No, actually He was neither.
    • The early church practiced socialism. That wasn’t the case, either!
    • David raped Bathsheba! No, he did not.
    • It’s OK to vote for politicians that might not vote “pro-life” on the issue of abortion but who are “pro-life” on issues like caring for the poor and homeless. Nothing could be further from the truth!
    • Homosexuality does not send you to hell. I know that because being heterosexual doesn’t send you to heaven. Wait! Not so fast!

The above list represents just a few of many “social justice interpretations” of Scripture that are misleading at best, or in worst-case scenarios, “feel-good” perspectives that actually can lead a person to hell. I write this only to declare the unvarnished truth. It can be, and in some cases is, that serious. Even so, despite the danger, the “feel-good” element entices and attracts many. This has Satan’s fingerprints all over it, even if evangelical SJWs have good intentions!

Fifthly and finally, standpoint epistemology cannot legitimately claim to be a means of arriving at objective truth.

Just as standpoint epistemology is rooted in relativism and therefore self-contradictory, its assumption that people can arrive at objective truth by way of a subjective path or paths also is self-contradictory—and ludicrous. No one who embraces relativism, even a little bit, really believes it. Just look at that person’s actions, how he or she lives. Dr. D. James Kennedy observed,

It becomes very difficult to live in a completely relativistic world.…Suppose you are waiting in your car at a train crossing, and a train is coming down the tracks at 60 miles an hour. You know that if you drive your car out in front of that train, you are not going to be “relatively” dead—you are going to be “absolutely” dead. We can’t live by [a perspective that doesn’t acknowledge this and other clear realities].

STEP is unbiblical. However, if SJWs (even evangelical SJWs) can convince others that the social justice narrative is true, they apparently don’t realize or don’t care that it doesn’t fit the real world or that it stands contrary to Scripture. It “feels” right, and that’s enough, at least for now.

Don’t fall for their rhetoric. Even if it feels good now, it won’t forever—

—because it will lead to a very bad place.

 

Copyright © 2020 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.

Related article at www.discoverbedrocktruth.org:
One of Satan’s Most Effective Strategies for Attacking God’s Word
A Look at Trajectory Hermeneutics

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture has been taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Notes:

¹This doesn’t mean experience and reason are of no value, but that we are wise to understand and respect their limitations. Moreover, it also does not mean that revelation as a means of knowing is reliable in every situation. As Dr. Corts affirmed, it is a trustworthy means of knowing if the source of information revealed is fully trustworthy. Finally, experience and reason have supportive roles to play in affirming revealed truth, but they cannot be deemed more authoritative than divine revelation. These caveats are important.

²Millard J. Erickson, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology, (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1986), 49.