The Rationalism of Descartes and the Postmodern Shift in the War for Truth

By Mark W. Christy, PhD

Up until the time of the Reformation, the Church enjoyed a security and centralized foothold in institutions of higher education. In the 1600s, the centralization of God in the thinking of many scholars began to give way as the Age of Reason, the beginning of the modern period, came into fruition. With the rationalism heralded by the work of these thinkers among others, the rise of the autonomous self, loosed from the chains of religious constraints, had begun.

René Descartes, one of the more well-known scholars from this period, laid much of the groundwork for modern philosophy as well as scientific inquiry with “his plan to construct a self-evident, neutral basis for intellectual consensus.”[i] In his attempt to rise above the extreme religious tension of the era, Descartes sought a neutral place whereby a person could pursue truth free from all bias. For him, the truth could be ascertained with certainty only by separating the inquiry from the inquirer. In argument for the discovery of truth through purely rationalistic methods, Descartes simultaneously established self over and against God as the new arbiter of truth.

On the surface, one can certainly identify with Descartes’ plight to find a way forward due to overarching religious tension wrought in the many conflicts of that era between the Catholics and Protestants. To resolve this situation, Descartes did what so many people have done. He stepped forward and sought to establish a model for truth inquiry and a way to assert truth unblemished by religious bias by retreating to his self as the ultimate source for the obtainment of truth.

Unfortunately for Descartes, he failed to realize that his experience of religion had formed within him a bias against religion and the possibility that it may possess truth. This bias could have led him to carefully consider the truth proclamations of the time based upon their internal consistency and their alignment with the Word of God. Furthermore, he could have read through the works of many ancient Christian writers as well as Church historians and used that information to better discern the truth. Dispensing with these logical methods of inquiry, Descartes simply retreated to himself and his own experience of reality as if his experience could be repeatable by anyone who followed his footsteps to the extent that truth could be grasped correctly and assuredly by all and a time of peace would finally come.

Rejecting any historical source of truth along with all external sources (even those claiming divinity), Descartes began his mission to ascertain a new bedrock approach to truth by deconstructing tradition and testimony through the employment of doubt. Setting aside indirect access to the truth, Descartes made his first step toward his new method of truth inquiry by resolving “to accept nothing as true which I did not clearly recognize to be so.”[ii]

Following his trail of doubt to its very end, Descartes found only one thing that could not be doubted which was the doubter doing the doubting, hence his well-known conclusion: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ With an amazing amount of veiled humility that willingly conceded his struggle to perceive truth in all matters, this philosopher ultimately asserted himself in the most prideful of ways by anointing himself, despite his admission of a plethora of doubts, to be the source of truth simply because he felt that he could not doubt that he was doubting.

Trapped within his own experience of reality which had been immersed completely in doubt, Descartes allowed his thinking to shape truth based upon his own experience gained through his own reflections. His own self became the anchor in his quest and the sole means of stability as he journeyed forward in his thoughts. And yet, his supposed self, his doubting self, appears to have been just an abstraction of his true self as he plainly, though apparently unwittingly, refers to himself as “a thing which thinks.”[iii] By saying this, he draws a line of separation between himself and his thinking in such a way that his thinking could only be regarded as an extension of his (for him) elusive self. This elusive self is the one that experienced all of the events, opportunities, education, and experiences that had continued to pervade his life even during the time of descent into all manner of doubts.

The certainty supposedly achieved by Descartes was anything but because it was only achieved by mentally disassociating himself from any other stimuli other than his own self-centered and purely self-informed thinking which morphed into pure doubt as he willingly chose to abandon other possible sources of truth other than those arising directly from his own mind. Peter J. Leithart agrees, “To achieve the kind of absolute certainty that he’s after, [Descartes] has to posit a different self from his empirical, public self. Descartes’ actual thinking self, which has been informed of all manner of other potential sources for truth arising in one way or another with his many experience, is one that led Descartes to begin his journey into doubt and the one that continues to think irrespective of his doubting.”

Descartes’ discounting of his many experiences as opportunities to acquire truth has become a major starting point for postmodernists to begin their assault upon the modernism which finds its roots in his self-aggrandizing doubts. Just in their criticism, postmodernists still choose to follow modernists like Descartes by maintaining self as the sole arbiter of truth. Unlike premodern epistemology which perceived God as the foundation of knowledge and assumed the presence of divine revelation, modern and postmodern epistemology perceive self as the foundation of knowledge. Whereas modernists search for a foundation via human rationality, postmodernists reject the usefulness of reasoning in their search for truth in favor of their own experiences. 

With a self-centered mentality, postmodernists base any sense of God merely on subjective evidence from their personal experiences and reject all historical and objective evidence such as the Bible. This approach, however, is not that different from Descartes, who also rejected his experiences with external sources of knowledge by seeking after direct knowledge arising from his own capacity to think. This purity in the commitment to thinking apart from experiential interaction with the world is, however, demoted in its primacy (if not completely excluded) by postmodernists in favor of non-rational experiences.

When approaching Scripture, postmodernists use their hermeneutic of personal experience which “privileges the text and elevates the reader” allowing readers to “define and create textual meaning.”  Maurice S. Friedman, who advocates a postmodern hermeneutic, argues that individuals do “not have access to absolute Truth but only a relation to the truth and that the revelations of which the theologian speaks do not put [individuals] in firm possession of the ‘essence’ of God but speak to [them] in and out of particular historical situations.”  Such a view, which elevates experience of readers while affirming the cultural setting within which the Bible was written, deconstructs the text by causing dissolution of the meaning of the original authors. 

This postmodern and thoroughly subjective hermeneutic has led to an age where the doubt of Descartes remains along with the heightened view of the self as the only one capable of truth discovery. The ultimate victim throughout the modernist period and the contemporary shift to postmodernism has been the primacy and the reliability of the Word of God in the determination of truth. As society has made this transition, the Church has at many points chosen to join the culture in this regard.

This age has seen the rise of the megachurch where carefully-crafted experience dominates the worship services so that people may be attracted toward them through the same worldly stimuli that they have grown accustomed to thanks to the pervasive entertainment industry. At these churches, and even frequently among smaller churches aspiring to join them, preachers have lost site of their central role as disciplers who are to unveil the truths of God’s Word to people regardless of whether those truths are deemed to be offensive. Instead of pleasing God by taking a firm stance upon His Word and teaching it directly, many have chosen to please people by de-elevating truth which causes friction among those who are lovers of themselves and by concealing the truth in their preaching by focusing more on various aspects of delivery which appeal to the senses. For many of these well-known preachers, the truth of God’s Word may still remain discernible to those who are acquainted with it; nevertheless, it is spoken in such a way that the meaning becomes elusive, and the listener becomes privileged as the one who can assign whatever meaning is preferred.

As churchgoers become more and more dumbed-down by attending these churches, they only become that much more entrenched in their ignorance and theological stupor. Arising in a culture that has thoroughly devalued the intellect, more and more of these churches are opting for leaders who come not from the seminaries but from all types of secular experiences, as these experiences are believed to hold more value for the instruction of God’s people than objective study of the Word of God. As any preacher who has interviewed with churches can tell you, most churches will field a pastoral search committee that seeks after a candidate who fits their own desires more so than the biblical requirements. In such a vacuum of sound theological commitment, one’s charisma and previous job experiences become the deciding factors.

Should the pastor have spent significant time being trained by God in faith-checking experiences like those of Job, David, and Jeremiah, he will find these experiences will likely make him appear to be a loser to any of these churches which allowed postmodernism to seep in. As to why this is so, one need only to reflect on Descartes’s mistake which has been previously discussed. While postmoderns champion experience as the supreme authority in truth determination, they fail to see that they are ‘the thing that experiences.’ This thing that they are is an isolated individual who can only experience reality in part because people are by default trapped in the moment with access only to those things which pervade their experience. As a such a thing, postmoderns still have to choose to trust their experience and the various sources (people, things, etc.) that inform their experience.

Unfortunately, many churches and their pastoral search committees have all but abandoned their experience with the Word of God (if they even really attempted such) as a trustworthy source of knowledge. Replacing God’s given foundation, they have elevated other experiences and placed their trust in them. Like Samuel when he was sent by God to anoint a king to replace Saul, they have chosen to allow appearances to shape their knowledge and their choices instead of God’s person as revealed in Scripture (1 Sam 16:6-7). In line with Samuel’s error, they look for beauty and the appearance of success. Despite the biblical call for them to search out a man who holds fast to the truth like Paul, they prefer those who have mastered the “cleverness of speech” like the well-known orators who left audiences entranced and demanding more entertainment (cf. 1 Cor 1:17; 2 Cor 11:6).

In conclusion, the successes of the Reformation with its firm stance on sola scriptura continue to face ceaseless attack from the culture at large. While modernists, like Descartes, elevated reason, and postmodernists elevated subjective experience, God Himself was being rejected as people found creative ways to elevate themselves as the sole determiners of truth despite what should have been foreseen as their obvious lack of ability given their finiteness. This war over truth between those who uphold the Scripture and access to its truth by personal faith (sola fide) and those who in one way or another look inward has entered the church in the postmodern era and seems here to stay. Those who wish to avoid being subsumed by the cultural clutches of postmodernism should maintain acute awareness and become vigilant in subjecting their rational and subjective experiences to their faithful inquiries into the Word of God.

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[i]Peter J. Leithart, Solomon among the Postmderns (Grand Rapids: Brazos 2008), 24.

[ii]Leon Pearl, Descartes (New York: Twayne, 1977), 36.

[iii]Ibid., 91.