Theological Journal – October 12 Flat Epistemology: David Fitch

THE PROBLEM OF FLAT EPISTEMOLOGY (A quick 7 paragraphs - looking for some dialogue)

Flat epistemology – focuses on the essence of what we know – directly, as individuals, not on how what we know must be translated, and even shaped within a different language world and culture in order to be understood and lived together. It sees all knowledge as flat - from one so-called universal viewpoint. It takes many forms.

Flat epistemology is uni-dimensional. It tends to focus on the foundational metaphysics of the way things are. In a flat epistemology, we tend to think about what we know as universally true before we have thought through the peculiarities of its manifestation to us in this time and place. Flat epistemology goes from the universal to the particular. There is an absence in flat epistemology in acknowledging that other dimension that the way you conceptualize what you know, and the way you live it is conditioned (even made possible) by your language and culture.

My argument against flat epistemology, in no way, suggests that there is not (what I’ll label) a hard reality towards which all that we know refers. There is always a hard reality that we are relating to as human beings via all our cultures, geographies, countries, languages. A flat epistemology however focuses on that hard reality. It even recognizes that I must translate that hard kernel of reality to other cultures/languages. But it does not as easily recognize that we always come to this hard core reality first already shaped and influenced by a culture and a language.

In my opinion, Biblical studies people often fall into the trap of flat epistemology (although scholars like Wayne Meeks prove there are exceptions). The Biblical studies person often spends the majority of his/her time exegeting a text in its original context, and arriving at its truth. As a result, the translation of this truth into another culture can be treated like an afterthought. “We’ve done the hard part.” But I suggest the next leg of communication is often the hardest part.

As Christians in the West, particularly those who have been part of the dominant culture, we have to fight the knee-jerk tendency towards a flat epistemology. Flat epistemology resides deep within the history of Western colonialism. There’s a blindness there that requires self-reflection.

The issue of sexuality provides an example of what I’m talking about. We can say for instance that the Bible prohibits same sex sexual relationships, gay and or lesbian relationships, that God created us binary male or female, but what those very words mean, “male and/or female”, “gay and/or lesbian”, mean vastly different things across history, across cultures, even within my country (USA), even within my city (Chicago). And to even get at the social dynamics, the hierarchies, the oppressions, the antagonisms that have been built into these gender/sexuality structures will take many hours of listening and understanding of the language, the terms and what they mean. So even if we Christian students of the Bible are one hundred percent confident that God created a gender binary and prohibits same sex sexuality, we have miles to go before we can translate these ideas, what drives them, so that they communicate what God is doing in gender and sexuality to heal the world. This is the reality of our multi-cultural multi-linguistic post-Christendom world. This is what it means to be a missionary in the 21st century West. 

In conclusion, “flat epistemology” thinks in only one dimension. In that God did not come by way of the universal to the particular, but revealed the universal by coming first in the particular, a human person born enculturated as a Palestinian Jew, God expects that we Christians do the same. Christian leaders must listen deeply, know their cultures, listen for the Spirit, and extend the hard core reality of the gospel into all the cultures of our times. This is what church is, this is what church does. This is ‘missional church.’