William Stacy Johnson, “Reading the Scriptures Faithfully in a Postmodern Age”

“Nevertheless, this new mode of postmodern rationality is frightening to some Christians. They find it frightening because they have completely succumbed to a one-sided objectivism out of a deep-seated fear of the dangers of relativism. Without an object and infallible source of meaning, so their reasoning goes, the truth claims of the gospel seem to be undermined. Hence, their response is to ground Christian belief in an infallible text, an infallible experience, or an infallible magisterium.

“It is time that we recognize this foundationalist way of thinking for what it is. In its Christian guise, it represents not the strength of faith but the result of a faith that has lost its nerve. The Christian Scriptures set themselves up not so much as truth claims to be defended by philosophical foundations but as a witness to the transforming power that no truth claim itself can contain. The gospel is not a ‘foundation’ to render our traditional notions of rationality secure but a remaking of everything, including rationality itself.”

-“Reading the Scriptures Faithfully in a Postmodern Age” by William Stacy Johnson in The Art of Reading Scripture, 114.