Whose Meta-Narrative, Which Relativism?

(This Article was submitted to Academic Questions, a Journal of the National Association of Scholars)

Whose Meta-Narrative, Which Relativism?: Intellectual Jihad and the Un-masking of Liberalism

by CH Rob J King, Faculty, Grand Canyon University


The other day I posted a "blog" on a political adversary's blog-site. I posted the “blog” in response to a heated exchange on the new Wikia Campaigns e-mail list. Although he is an unknown outside the world of "techies," this list serve had been created by the ‘one and only’ Jim "Jimbo" Wales, inventor of Wiki-pedia, the free on-line encyclopedia. At the heart of the debate was what constitutes "free speech," what constitutes "spam" and what criteria would be utilized in making such decisions. This on-line interlocutor (a law student at Columbia University and undergrad alum of Duke ironically enough) essentially wanted to silence me in this forum due to my Pro-Life political commitments. My response to his “Nazi-spam request” was “Sir, If protecting the lives of babies is wasted time then I will pray for you.” Based upon this response, I received numerous follow-up e-mails and ended up being listed in his personal blog, with a surprising commentary by many of his own friends saying that he was trying to silence me because he simply disagreed with my political views.

Although the further details of this exchange are logged forever in the computer banks of Wikipedia, the conceptual argument (something missed by most respondents, including the Columbia law student!) was nevertheless completely overlooked. Mud-slinging abounded, but the heart of the conceptual discussion only three respondents seemed to even have a clue of what was being argued! In many ways, the exchange epitomized what Alasdair MacIntyre described in After Virtue, a type of confused moral discourse in which various moral and political terminology was being utilized, and much on-line ink was being spilled, but by and large the conversation partners were speaking past each other conceptually. The primary problem with the entire discussion was that it is was marked by an incommensurability of moral terminology and at times a creeping form of emotivism in which the truth or falsehood of any respective view was based solely on a cloaked meritocracy of on-line insider knowledge (i.e. the Wikipedia "good ole boys club"), rather than any type of serious engagement of the premises (stated and unstated) of a counter-posed argument. Well as a gate-crasher (the civilized Greek crashing the Gates of the Barbarians!), all I could do was put on my best Stanley Hauerwas epistemological gun-slinging tie and blue jeans and get to work deconstructing (provocatively if necessary) the incoherence and raw will-to-power of my interlocutor.

First I began with Michel Foucault, a darling of Liberalism (he was after all a practicing homosexual) who was used as a subversive attempt to pull intellectual insurrection among the Liberal camp by pointing to the supposed ‘objectivity’ of knowledge as often being a thinly clad will-to-power propped up by state-run institutions such as the modern prison system. Next, I threw at them Alasdair MacIntyre, the former Scottish Marxist turned Aristotelian, who was used to drop philosophical “smart bombs” on many remaining Liberal bunkers by conceptually asking the question of sociology of knowledge, even to the point of enquiring about the professional and academic qualifications that were supporting their blanket dismissal of highly nuanced philosophical arguments. Of course, any religious speech on my part was jettisoned by the on-line liberals as being "extremist.” To the Liberal camp, some of whom were even Christian Liberals, all that I was doing was a jihad intellectually. Their response to me, the supposed intellectual jihadist was, “ban all Pro-Life speech from Political Forums!” “Put on the spam filter!” “Move the discussion to a different web-blog!” Whereas one could advocate even starting a new Technological Party in Campaigns Wikia (a.k.a. “the Green Party with I-Pods!”), if one raises even an on-line eyebrow concerning the marginalizing of Pro-life politics (in short, the Republican Party's majority!) then suddenly I was viewed as Osama with a rosary!

Although I am, in fact, engaged in the culture wars (as an on-line professor and military chaplain), “intellectual jihad” is not the correct category for such cultural warfare. Rather than "destroying Liberals" (the jihadist approach), simply unmasking Liberal hypocrisy is the goal of this paper. Like Foucault, himself a Liberal post-modernist, astutely pointed out, Liberalism, on its own terms, usually degenerates into hypocrisy and at times raw police force. If one cannot silence the Pro-Life movement intellectually, then make it a crime to peacefully assemble in protest. If one cannot understand an on-line interlocutor's argument, then simply pull the "good ole boy" dirty hand of screaming for spam filters. In that setting, hypocrisy was successfully unmasked. Even the young Columbia law student’s friends “blogged” on about how he was trying to silence me—victory for classical thought.

Whose Meta-Narrative, Which Relativism?

Unlike the post-modern era, the classical era in Western civilization (Fifth Century B.C. – Fifth Century A.D.) has been adopted (co-opted even!) by Jew, Christian and pagan alike. Why is this so? Why did early Christian theologians such as Augustine in the West and Gregory of Nyssa in the East, two thinkers trained in the philosophical paideia of the time, essentially fuse neo-Platonism and Biblical Christian belief? In the contemporary scene, why do Christian and Private Secular Educationists alike herald the value of a “Great Books” curriculum in which Plato, Aristotle, et al are studied? One answer is that the classical era, unlike modern relativism degenerating into post-modernism, provides for and in fact is built upon meta-narrative. For Plato to think that his thought was not universally applicable (i.e. a type of “meta-narrative”), but rather only “true for him” or “true for Athens” (i.e. relativism) would be completely alien to Plato. For example, In positing the “ideal Republic” or the “ideal of justice,” Plato sought after a universal standard, and a universal standard as set within an overarching universal cosmology and epistemology, in short, a coherent universally applicable meta-narrative. Granted the term “meta-narrative” itself implies a deviation from classical thought in that something “other-than-meta-narrative” can even be conceptualized, but having crossed the Rubicon of Post-Modernism, meta-narrative must now be the category de jeur that Christian, Jew and pagan alike must now seek to recapture.

Now that we are agreed that any attempted retrieval of classical thought, in order to be true to the texts themselves (texts qua texts, a methodology difficult for post-modern literary critics, for example Stanley Fish who views textual meaning as inextricably narrative community-dependent) must also, of course, be an exercise in meta-narrative. Normative reality is the conceptual framework (epistemological and cosmological) of Classical Thought, but the question would still remain, whose meta-narrative would one use? The Christian meta-narrative is the one and only true meta-narrative, and to think otherwise would be to go against the heart of Christian thought as Christian Belief is grounded in the Eternal and Incarnate LOGOS (John 1:1-18). All reality is breathed forth by the Spirit working in creation (Genesis 1), the ruach elohim, and as breathed forth by the Spirit the LOGOS is embedded in all of creation, if not in essence (the pantheist heresy), then in LOGIC. As Thomas Aquinas would later clarify, Divine Rationality is the source and mirror of all human rationality, and therefore the LOGOS is itself the LOGIC of all creation. Thus, to the Christian, meta-narrative should be an issue that has already been solved. The LOGOS is the meta-narrative, not just for Christians, but for the entire cosmos. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being.” (John 1:1-3) The Christian worldview is one which by its very own self-authenticating criterion of epistemological authority (i.e. the LOGOS as Divine Rationality) can never be a form of relativism or post-modernism to the extent that such canonical aspects of Christian belief would therefore be jettisoned. No, to be Christian is to not be a relativist, nor a post-modernist.

Having noted the epistemological superiority of the Christian worldview as the universal meta-narrative that not only transcends but is instantiated in world culture(s), given that Christianity still only represents 1/3 of the world population, the question of competing meta-narratives still presents itself. Whose meta-narrative should Higher Education (or Governmental structures) be based upon? Should simple majority rule determine whether or not institutions are rooted in the Christian meta-narrative? If majority rule is cited, would the “minority perspective” (e.g. Buddhism, Islam, Wicca, scientology, secular humanism) also be included in order to create a practical “hodge-podge of viewpoints?” If competing meta-narratives are “fused” (perhaps in Hegelian fashion!), would the end result still be anyone’s meta-narrative? Truly within Christianity, such a fusion of rival traditions of enquiry can result in a fruitful re-conceptualizing of Christian Belief, for example as Alasdair MacIntyre argues is the case for Augustinian Platonism and a rediscovered medieval Aristotelianism resulting in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. But is such a fusion of rival traditions even possible outside of the Christian Meta-Narrative? One could posit a LOGOS-based fusion of Christian Belief and other intellectual and/or religious traditions as somehow being grounded in creation—i.e. all grounded in the LOGOS as embedded in nature—but in so doing, the resulting meta-narrative would still be Christian.

Therefore, in conclusion, and in agreement with the radical orthodox camp (e.g. John Milbank of the University of Virginia; Stanley Hauerwas of Duke), there is no other option than the Christian meta-narrative. Truly, one can disagree with part or the whole of Christian belief (unbelief is always an option), but according to its own terms, Christian meta-narrative would have to be everyone’s meta-narrative. Within this meta-narrative of Christian Belief, surely practice plays a constituency-defining role (the point made by virtue ethicists such as MacIntyre, Hauerwas, et al). Also, within this Christian meta-narrative, other worldviews (philosophical and religious) can be incorporated. For example, Platonic thought was easily adopted by Christian theologians of the first seven centuries and Aristotelian categories similarly co-opted by Aquinas and the medieval scholasticism that ensued. Also, other religions can find expression (in part) in orthodox Christian belief and practice, without degenerating into syncretism (e.g. a proto-Trinitarian belief expressed by indigenous pre-Christian religion in the Philippines). Thus, both philosophy and world religion can be contained within the Christian meta-narrative, but only to the extent that such thought and practice is in conformity with the Divine LOGOS who is Jesus Christ, the Incarnate WORD. Therefore, although the Christian meta-narrative is indeed the only meta-narrative, the final question is which relativism would one be speaking of in such queries as I found in my on-line political battle on Wikia Campaigns? The ordinary, fallacious relativism, is of course ver boten. What is “true for a community” or “true for an individual” is either true or false universally. There is no middle ground. Having discarded the fallacious form of relativism (the kind of relativistic thinking that clouds the minds of much Western Higher Education), a “provisional relativism” is nonetheless both allowable and warranted. Here, the Orthodox theological sharp division between “apophatic theology” (knowledge that is a mystery) and “kataphatic theology” (knowledge that can be known, either revealed or through natural means) is a helpful addition to the current conversation concerning the present incoherence of the modern, and post-modern Western university system. Granted, this form of “provisional relativism” would still be under the Christian Meta-Narrative, but through emphasizing what would be considered a mystery (both theologically and of the cosmos), a certain type of “relativism” would be and in fact should be affirmed in that no single culture has a stranglehold on the “ONE TRUTH.” If only my on-line interlocutor could see either the need to affirm an overarching meta-narrative or the consequent need to affirm a type of apophatic Christian relativism that could encompass all of the world’s cultures within the Mystery of Salvation.