J. P. MORELAND’S WORK on truth often has been coupled with his work on postmodernism. With the latter, he has focused on two overall emphases. First, he has addressed the denial of objective knowledge and reason, which involves attending to issues of epistemological objectivity, foundationalism, and what he has rightly identified as the core issue with postmodernism: do we have direct access to reality itself, or is all our access somehow mediated? Second, he has addressed in these contexts some of the ontological aspects of truth. Also, in discussions of philosophy of perception, he has discussed the ontology of mental states, and how all these metaphysical factors bear upon postmodern thought.
These foci are important for engaging and understanding postmodern thought on a number of levels, and they will form the first section of my essay. I will also try to nuance some of his points in light of interactions with other postmoderns. But, in the second part, I will try to unpack in more detail what is seldom addressed in postmodern literature or its critiques—the general ontological patterns of postmodernism. As we will see, there are reasons for this lack of discussion by postmoderns. Then, I will test their ontological positions, and I will argue that they undercut all knowledge.
In part three, I will draw out some further implications of these findings for believers and the kingdom of God, which will help explain J. P.’s often passionate responses to Christians who have embraced the postmodern turn.
In many places, J. P. treats postmodernism in terms of historical, chronological, and philosophical theses. Historically, postmodernism is a period of thought that is a reaction against modernity, which he describes as “the period of European thought that developed out of the Renaissance (fourteenth to seventeenth centuries) and flourished in the Enlightenment (seventeenth to nineteenth centuries) in the ideas of people like Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, Leibniz, and Kant.”1 Chronologically, postmodernity has followed and (in certain senses) replaced modernity.
Philosophically, J. P. often describes postmodernism as a version of cultural relativism about the nature of truth, reality, the self, meaning, and more. It denies the existence of objective reality and truth, along with reason.2 Yet, in another essay, he nuances this latter claim by distinguishing four “degrees” of postmodernism: (1) ontic (which is a thoroughgoing construction of reality; perhaps only someone like Richard Rorty might hold this); (2) alethic (which denies the concept of truth, but not the reality of a mind-independent world); (3) epistemic (which rejects objectivity epistemologically); and (4) axiological (in which ethics and religion are treated in postmodern ways).3
I think his notions of alethic and epistemic postmodernism, perhaps combined, are the varieties most encountered in Christian postmodern literature. None of them want to deny the reality of creation and (especially) God, or to say that reality is just a construction of our language.4 They also seem to insist that their views are not relativistic. For instance, J. P. notes that Philip Kenneson thinks “one can defend objective truth or relativism only by assuming it is possible for human beings to take up a ‘view from nowhere,’” which he denies is possible.5
J. P. rightly observes that a crucial issue for postmoderns is that no one is objective epistemologically. That is, no one is neutral, unbiased, or dispassionate, and no one can (or should) extricate themselves from their “situatedness”: their historical location, culture, language, religion, or even (I would add) family upbringing—that is, their particularity.6 For postmoderns, modernity emphasized that by way of reason we could all know universal, ahistorical, transcendent truths, affording us knowledge unaffected by our particularity. But they reject this idea; everyone is situated in the world as a conditioned observer. Due to our finitude, we have epistemic limitations and thus “blindness” due to our limited perspective. And due to our fallenness, we have blindness due to our sin and perversity.7 Thus, no human being can ever hope to achieve an unbiased “God’s eye” standpoint, be blind to nothing, and have exhaustive, pristine knowledge. It is deeply arrogant to think otherwise, and thus the postmodern view seemingly promotes humility.
Now, J. P. observes that postmoderns see this rejection as also impugning foundationalism, according to which we can have properly basic beliefs that are ultimately grounded in reality, and know that to be so. Indeed, this is a central motivation behind the view.8 J. P. also points out that for many postmoderns, foundationalism is motivated by “Cartesian anxiety,” a concern to have utter certainty in our beliefs.
There has been much confusion in attempted dialogues between foundationalists like J. P. and myself with many postmoderns, in which postmoderns often have depicted foundationalism as being only of the Cartesian sort. But genuine progress has been made on this front, as in J. P.’s dialogue with John Franke.9 J. P. defends a modest foundationalism, in which the foundational beliefs are not necessarily indubitable (since precious few beliefs are), yet they still are based upon our having direct access to reality.
So, the crucial issue, which J. P. rightly realizes to be so, is whether we can have direct acquaintance with reality.10 But for postmoderns, our situatedness requires that they reject any creaturely ability to have such access, for it means that we somehow have set aside our “filters” and “conditionedness” to have a naked gaze at reality itself. Since it bears such a strong family resemblance to epistemological objectivity and foundationalism, all three must be rejected by postmoderns.
For J. P., part of the answers to these issues associated with epistemological objectivity reside in clarifying psychological and objective rationality. Psychological rationality is “detachment, the absence of bias, a lack of commitment either way on a topic.”11 By contrast, objective rationality is “the state of having accurate experiential or cognitive access to the thing itself,”12 on the basis of which we can have accurate (not exhaustive) knowledge thereof. Helpfully, he observes that people can be psychologically objective, especially in areas about which they have little to no interest. Even so, it is not necessarily a virtue, for if we have thought about some issue and developed convictions (such as that rape is wrong), it would be wrong to remain unbiased.
But even if we are not psychologically objective, we still can be rationally objective. Here J. P. often appeals to case studies that people can replicate, to see for themselves if these things are so, using a phenomenological method he learned from studying Edmund Husserl under Dallas Willard. So, if we have a commitment to some viewpoint, we still can assess arguments and evidence for and against it, to see if we should still remain committed to that belief (say, who to vote for in the next election).
Because of that ability, we can discern the difference between good and bad reasons for holding a belief. Thus, our biases do not “stand between” us and what we are thinking about or experiencing. If they did, how could we ever get started in experiencing or knowing anything? Moreover, as he puts it, “bias may make it more difficult [to be rationally objective], but not impossible. If bias made rational objectivity impossible, then no teacher—including the postmodernist herself—could responsibly teach any view the teacher believed on any subject! Nor could she teach opposing viewpoints because she would be biased against them!”13
Still, J. P. says that on postmodernism (at least the alethic kind), the factors of our situatedness “stand between” us and reality such that reality ends up being a construct we make by how we use our particular languages in respective communities.14 Sometimes that is how postmoderns themselves put things. Stanley Grenz and John Franke say that “we do not inhabit the ‘world-in-itself’; instead, we live in a linguistic world of our own making.”15 However, from my interactions, it may be better to interpret the denial of direct access and the effects of our situatedness more along the lines of James K. A. Smith in his appeal to Jacques Derrida. For them, interpretation is ubiquitous. As Smith puts it, the postmodern turn is the turn to interpretation, such that “all of our experience is always already an interpretation.”16 But while this approach avoids the “standing between” metaphor, it still denies direct access to reality.
As an aspect of his answers to the issues with epistemological objectivity, J. P. brings clarity to the possible ways our situatedness affects our abilities to access reality. Frankly, I think this is one of the most helpful contributions one can make to this discussion. There are three ways to understand our situatedness, he explains, the first being constructivism, according to which whatever it is we are experiencing or thinking about is somehow made to be what it is by our mental act directed upon it.17 This could be by how we talk about or interpret it. But this view is simply false; as J. P. realizes, we can pay attention to things in the external world. We also can pay attention to our thoughts, words, or experiences for what they are, and we can notice that they do nothing to change the former.18
Second, there is epistemic closure. This is a denial that we ever have direct access to anything in reality. Indeed, this view seems to be what postmoderns commonly seem to mean. But if this were so, then we have logical and descriptive problems. Logically, if all access (for example, in experience) requires interpretation, then what are we experiencing? Surely not another interpretation. But this view seems to leave us stuck with a vicious infinite regress, without any way to get started and encounter reality at all. Descriptively, J. P. offers case studies that help illustrate how we can become aware that in our everyday lives, we are directly acquainted with reality. This is how, for instance, children learn to form concepts of mundane things like apples—by many experiences of apples, noticing what is in common among them, and then forming a concept on that basis. Then it can be used to compare with something new they see, to see if it too is an apple (and not, say, a red ball). We adults do this kind of comparison all the time, too—for example, when we use our mobile phones to refill prescriptions, or enter our “PIN” code to buy something.19
Third, however, is what he calls attentive influence, which he argues actually is what is at work with humans. In this, we have the abilities (as a descriptive matter of fact) to compare our concepts with things as they truly are, just as in the apple example above, and adjust our concepts as needed to better fit with reality. And we can know this to be so, if we pay careful attention to what is consciously before our minds.
Moreover, over time, attentive influence often reflects a pattern. That is, “people fall into ruts and adopt ways of seeing things according to which certain features are noticed and others are neglected.”20 What I notice in watching a movie a second time could largely be a reflection of what I noticed the first time. But J. P. provocatively and accurately, I think, suggests that “situatedness functions as a set of habit forming background beliefs and concepts that direct our acts of noticing or failing to notice various features of reality.”21
For example, I grew up with parents who were born into Christian-based families in 1914. They were raised with fundamentalist influences, including a fear of losing their salvation unless they were careful. Additionally, they had other anxieties, in part from their family backgrounds. But one parent also seemed to have had obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and I inherited not only that disposition, but I also “caught” their other fears. For instance, as a child, I was obsessed with having to be perfect, or else God would not love me. That fear, along with my own tendencies toward OCD, have stayed with me through much of my adult life, even unconsciously impeding and coloring my ability to really embrace, not just rationally but also emotionally (at the heart-level), that God really loves me. My family background, both in terms of nurture and genetics, helped habituate how I tended to perceive God. However, through a lengthy period of depression, anxiety, and counseling, the Lord met me and spoke intimately to my heart that He loves me with all His heart. Finally, after helping to deal with the factors that were blocking my experience of His love, I was able to experience Him and His love as they are—not fully, nor exhaustively, but still accurately. The result has been a much greater freedom from my former mindset, and even an ability to experience His joy, which had been a long-term prayer request.
So our “situatedness” affects how we attend to reality, but, as with my case, with effort and sometimes help, we can change how we do that. This may require forming new habits, but it can be done. Otherwise, things like therapy, or even coming to see the extent to which language and culture influence us, would be impossible.
From what we have surfaced, we may remark more quickly on the postmodern view of truth. They reject the long-standing correspondence theory of truth, which is a metaphysical thesis according to which a “truth-bearer” matches up, or is in a correspondence relation, with a “truth-maker,” namely, some state of affairs in reality.22 Due to their beliefs about the effects of situatedness, postmoderns have to reject the correspondence theory. However, that does not mean that they must reject all notions of objective truth. As Merold Westphal says, there is objective “Truth,” but only for God. As finite and fallen creatures we can never achieve God’s view, and thus we always work from a standpoint of how the world appears to us.23 Yet, Westphal seems to substitute an epistemological notion of truth, rather than an ontological one. Truth might be what people in a language game mean by that term. It may be a matter not so much of truth, but truthfulness, that is, one’s story being in conformity with the master narrative of one’s community (such as Jesus’ story for Christians).
Now I will shift attention even more to the ontological positions of postmodernism, and we will find that J. P. has anticipated and addressed these issues as well.
Despite the strong emphasis upon particularity by postmodernists, nonetheless there are patterns, even metaphysically. First, following Wittgenstein, there has been a tendency to try to avoid metaphysics due to its supposed “confusions.” Brad Kallenberg explains that for Wittgenstein, metaphysical theories muddy the waters by searching for “totalizing,” theoretical (i.e., modern) explanations. In their place, he proposes that we replace explanation with description.24 This involves paying attention to how we use our languages in our forms of life. Engaging in metaphysics is not, then, to be a search for essences and “theoria,” but a focus upon how we talk metaphysically in a language game.
Second, postmodernism is a rejection of essences and universals, as Moreland realizes.25 Let me illustrate by drawing upon Westphal’s development of Derrida’s theory of signs. If we cannot have direct access to anything as it is in itself (i.e., essentially), then, contrary to Husserl, it would be misguided to search for essences or universals. We could only experience particulars (for example, a particular red shade in the ball), but not redness, a universal.
Westphal appeals to Derrida’s claim that “there is nothing outside the text.”26 For Westphal, epistemically, it means that “being must always already be conceptualized,” for we never have direct access to things themselves.27 Metaphysically, things themselves are signs and not what is signified, so they “essentially point beyond themselves.”28 Therefore, Westphal claims “there is no signified that ‘would place a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign’ by failing to refer beyond itself.”29
Why so? For Derrida, there is always an absence “to” things, which yet is present. What is not present is somehow essential to what is. Derrida denies that things, such as thoughts, facts, or linguistic utterances are wholes, complete in themselves. Rather, from one re-presentation to another, there always will be differance. Nothing has an identity that can be circumscribed, which is due to the denial of essences.
The implications of this denial can be clarified by appealing to Daniel Dennett. He borrows from W. V. O. Quine’s “indeterminacy of radical translation,” according to which it always is possible for two rival translations to tie for being the “best.”30 For Quine, Dennett, and even the postmoderns, there are no intrinsic meanings to words because there are no essences. Conversely, if there were essences (“deeper facts”) to words and meanings, then they could have a determinate meaning.31
Now, Dennett remarks that Samuel Wheeler draws insightful connections between Quine, Donald Davidson, and Derrida. Per Wheeler, Derrida provides “important, if dangerous, supplementary arguments and considerations” to the ones that Davidson and Quinians have made.32 As Wheeler notes, “For Quinians, of course, it is obvious already that speech and thought are brain-writing, some kind of tokenings which are as much subject to interpretation as any other.”33
This last sentence nails the issue, whether for naturalists like Dennett and Quine, or postmoderns: due to a denial specifically of essences, anything in reality (whether a thought, word, person, or any other object) is subject to interpretation. And there is no way to stop the regress of interpretations, due to the denial of essences (and, as a prime example, universals). There is no way to get started to know anything. Yet, we do know many things, even if not infallibly or exhaustively (J. P. is quick to point this out due to his particularism). So this view must be false.
Third, the denial of essences finds an extension in postmodern literature to their views of the self. Predictably, its unity is not that of an essence, unlike J. P.’s views of the soul, but instead is that of a narrative. Narratives are always formed by the language of a community, so that a self’s story is not just an individual’s making, but a communal one.34 J. P. agrees, for he notes that on postmodern views, the self is a social construct.
Now, for postmoderns, it seems narratives must be made up of a bundle of particular sentences (not propositions, which would be universals with essences, as Moreland observes).35 As people live, the events of their lives continue to unfold. So their narratives also change. What then provides the sameness of the person through these changes? It seems there is nothing to ground that identity, except perhaps some linguistic ascriptions that stipulate that all linguistic ascriptions in a given story are about the same person. But there is no essence to a story. Even those “identifying” ascriptions would just be parts of a bundle, and the bundle constantly changes as new ascriptions are made. Thus, there is no basis for the person to remain the same through change.
That result has serious repercussions, especially for postmodern views. Often they want to appeal to a virtue ethic, so that we can grow in virtue (and Christlikeness for Christian authors).36 But such growth is impossible; there is only the addition of new linguistic ascriptions to a narrative, which makes it a new narrative and consequently a new person, not a development of the original one. But growth in virtue presupposes the literal sameness of a person through such changes.37
If we cannot have knowledge on postmodernism, how do we have knowledge? Dallas Willard explains that there is a natural affinity between thought (which has concepts) and its objects, due to their essential natures.38 Due to its nature, the concept of an apple has a natural affinity with the properties apples must have to be apples. Concepts are intentional properties; the essential properties of an apple are its intensional properties, and actual apples make up the extension of the concept. The nature of a concept of an apple is to be of apples “because in their nature [concepts] inherently involve something else (their specific objects).”39
Three crucial points arise. First, Willard observes that
a primary manifestation of the affinity between thought and object is the fact that no one ever has to be taught what their thought (or perception) is a thought (or perception) of, nor could they be … the child knows what its thoughts (perceptions, etc.) are of as soon as it becomes aware that it is having experiences; and that is one foundation of most other learning that transpires.40
It seems our own, first-person access to what is before us consciously (including our intentional states) allows us to identify what our thoughts (with their concepts) are of.
Second, our thoughts, and thus our concepts, do not confer any new properties upon their objects. How so? Importantly, intensional properties (say, of apples) are not in the mind, whereas intentional properties (which are concepts) are. An apple’s intensional properties are before my mind in my thought, which has the concept of them present in it. Concepts are the intentional “bridge” between thought and its objects. These two kinds of properties are “together” in a way that the intensional properties “come to mind” whenever that concept is instanced in thought. I can also think of nonexistent things like Pegasus. I can have in mind the concept of Pegasus, a concept that would reach the intensional properties Pegasus would have if it existed. But since it doesn’t, my thought gets no further.
Third, we each can compare our awareness of an object, as it is before our minds, with our concept of that object, and vice versa, to see if they match up. I can see if they are the same or different, and I can see if my thought of that thing does (or does not do) anything to modify it. As Willard puts it, “In fact we do this sort of thing all the time, whenever we look at something to see if it is as we have thought it to be.”41 Indeed, as he argues, even those who deny such access to the real world do this all the time, yet they additionally hold that in thinking, seeing, or mentally acting upon some object, we modify it, such that we cannot get to the real thing in itself. But this is nonsense, as that very ability is presupposed in that denial.
J. P. is right; postmoderns and evangelicals can agree on many key needs—for example, humility, the rejection of arrogance and control (even with the “legalistic, ugly nature of abuses of rationalistic doctrinal certainty when such is not available”42), attention to situatedness, experiencing the Spirit, our dependency on Him, and more. But there is also a key difference. Genesis 3:5 (“For God knows that when you eat of [the fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”) is a warning, first to postmoderns, I think, because by holding that we cannot hear God’s voice, except only as we interpret it, in effect we end up being usurpers of His throne, defining reality as we see best. But Genesis 3:5 is also a warning to evangelicals, who can usurp by subtly and even arrogantly leaning on their own understandings as canonical, rather than on the Spirit.
I think this is a major reason why J. P. gets so passionate in his exhortations to postmoderns (and evangelicals too). Having been given the examples of Bill Bright, Dallas Willard, and Jesus Himself, he and I have tasted and seen the reality of the kingdom and the deep fulfillment of an intimate relationship with Christ. Neither of us wants to see Christians shortchanged or harmed and thus fall short of living in the fullness of His Spirit and Truth. What they (and the nations) need is for the Lord to bring about deep repentance among His people, so that we may see Him powerfully revive His church, thereby bringing about a massive incoming of people into His kingdom for His glory (not ours).
1. J. P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 77.
2. Ibid. See also J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 145; and his “Postmodernism and Truth,” Reasons for Faith: A Survey of Contemporary Christian Issues and Evidences, eds. Norman L. Geisler and Chad Meister (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 116.
3. J. P. Moreland, “Four Degrees of Postmodernism,” Come Let Us Reason: New Essays in Christian Apologetics, eds. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2012), 17–34.
4. For example, see James K. A. Smith’s reply to me, in which I argued that on postmodern views, we construct reality by our language use. He helpfully responded that postmodern thought is not a “stilted Kantianism,” but instead means that “the very experience of the things themselves is a matter of interpretation.” Indeed, “that interpreting the world as creation is, I would argue, the true interpretation, does not negate its status as an interpretation or ‘conditioned seeing’ (contra ‘direct acquaintance’)” (emphasis in original). James K. A. Smith, “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? A Response to the ‘Biola School’,” Christianity and the Postmodern Turn, ed. Myron B. Penner (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2005), 218.
5. Philip Kenneson, “There’s No Such Thing as Objective Truth, and It’s a Good Thing, Too,” in Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern World, eds. Timothy Phillips and Dennis Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 156. In my experience, tactically, it doesn’t help to tell postmodernists they are relativists. Likely, they will reply, “You just don’t understand.”
6. For example, see Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, 78.
7. Merold Westphal, “Phenomenologies and Religious Truth,” in Phenomenology of the Truth Proper to Religion, ed. Daniel Guerrière (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 121.
8. See my “Post-Conservatives, Foundationalism, and Theological Truth: A Critical Evaluation,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 48 (2005): 351−63. Nancey Murphy realizes this and, accordingly, claims that even so-called “foundational” beliefs hang “from the balcony” (that is, they too are theory-laden). See Beyond Liberalism & Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda, Rockwell Lecture Series, ed. Werner H. Kelber (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1996), 92.
9. See J. P. Moreland, “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” Philosophia Christi 8 (2006): 307–8. To her credit, Murphy realizes it is not the only kind in Beyond Liberalism.
10. See “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” 309.
11. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle, 79.
12. Ibid (emphasis added).
13. Moreland, “Postmodernism and Truth,” 119 (bracketed insert mine).
14. For example, see his “Four Degrees of Postmodernism,” 20; and Philosophical Foundations, 145.
15. Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 53. I, too, followed this understanding of postmodern views in my Truth and the New Kind of Christian (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005).
16. James K. A. Smith, “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?” 225.
17. Moreland, “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” 309−11.
18. I could, however, direct a recent thought upon another thought of mine and change it in light of the newer one. But even there, I still must attend to that original thought and the newer one as they are, even to compare them. In the text I am mainly addressing objects and persons in the world that exist whether or not I ever think of them (that is, they are mind-independent).
19. For examples, see my Truth and the New Kind of Christian, 174−84.
20. Moreland, “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” 311.
21. Ibid.
22. For example, see Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 135−42.
23. Merold Westphal, “Christian Philosophers and the Copernican Revolution,” in Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge, eds. C. Stephen Evans and Merold Westphal (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 176.
24. Brad J. Kallenberg, Ethics as Grammar: Changing the Postmodern Subject (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 212.
25. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 147.
26. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976), 158, quoted in Merold Westphal, “Hermeneutics as Epistemology,” The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, eds. John Greco and Ernest Sosa (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 429.
27. Westphal, “Hermeneutics as Epistemology,” 430.
28. Ibid.
29. Derrida, Of Grammatology, 49, as quoted by Westphal, “Hermeneutics as Epistemology,” 430.
30. Daniel C. Dennett, The Intentional Stance (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1989), 40.
31. Ibid., 208.
32. Samuel C. Wheeler III, “Indeterminacy of French Interpretation: Derrida and Davidson,” in E. Lepore, ed., Truth and Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 477, quoted in Dennett, The Intentional Stance, 40, note 2.
33. Wheeler, “Indeterminacy of French Interpretation,” 492, quoted in Dennett, The Intentional Stance, 40, fn. 2 (emphasis mine).
34. This has much affinity with Alasdair MacIntyre’s views of the narrative unity of the self. See his After Virtue, 3rd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), chap. 15.
35. Moreland, Philosophical Foundations, 136−39. The same applies to the correspondence relation, which he defends as an abstract entity with an essential nature (138−39).
36. For example, MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and Brad Kallenberg all embrace a kind of virtue ethic along with key Wittgensteinian assumptions. For example, see Hauerwas’s Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), or Kallenberg’s Ethics as Grammar.
37. See also R. Scott Smith, Virtue Ethics and Moral Knowledge: Philosophy of Language after MacIntyre and Hauerwas (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2003), chap. 6. Having knowledge also requires the sameness of a person through change. See my Naturalism and Our Knowledge of Reality: Testing Religious Truth-claims (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2012), 193−94.
38. Dallas Willard, “How Concepts Relate the Mind to Its Objects: The God’s Eye View Vindicated?” Philosophia Christi 1 (1999): 18.
39. Ibid., 15. See also Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Derek R. Brookes (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1990), chap. 4.
40. Willard, “How Concepts Relate the Mind to Its Objects,” 14−15.
41. Ibid., 18.
42. Moreland, “Two Areas of Reflection and Dialogue with John Franke,” 311.