THE PHILOSOPHY
Critical Realism (CR) is a branch of philosophy that distinguishes between the 'real' world and the 'observable' world. The 'real' cannot be observed and exists independent from human perceptions, theories, and constructions. The world as we know and understand it is constructed from our perspectives and experiences, through what is 'observable'. Thus, according to critical realists, observable structures cause observable events and the social world can be understood only if people understand the structures that generate the events.
In Science
Thus when a scientist constructs an experiment, he establishes the conditions to create the experiment and he observes the results (events). However, the results are caused by the underlying theoretical mechanisms, structures and laws that he cannot observe (unobservable structures). The scientist's understanding is through epistemological (theory of knowledge) constructivism and relativism. This is where the phrase 'Critical Realism' originates from.
AS APPLIED TO THEOLOGY & BIBLICAL HISTORY
Theological Critical Realism (TCR), as formulated by New Testament scholar N.T.Wright in his seminal work, The New Testament and the People of God (1992), bases a critical realist hermeneutic (interpretation of Scripture) on the thesis that knowledge of the real world always is framed by a worldview, of which stories (metanarratives) are an essential part.
Natural Bias and Ignorance
When we start discussing the New Testament with people from different traditions and denominations, Christian/Messianic or otherwise, it is very easy to get the impression that they are coming with a lot of baggage in their heads which is forcing them to read the text wrongly, we might think, whereas we make the supposition that we are simply reading the text straight or objectively. Everybody with a denominational or cultural bias or preference makes that assumption. It does not, however, take long in engaging with people before we realise that that is an extremely naïve way of going about it, as though everyone else is reading the text through distorting lenses but we, for some reason, are not.
Like Human Relationships
This relationship we have with the textual material is a bit like the relationships we have with friends or family members. When you first get to know someone you have an initial impression of who they are. You relate to them on the basis of that initial impression. But as you get closer to another person, the more mysterious they become as their hidden depths come to the surface, and the more surprised (and even shocked) you become because of your initial misjudgments. And if you want to take the relationship to a new level, you have to go with what you are discovering for the first time and be prepared to revise your initial assumptions about who they are. If you don't, you are simply treating them as a projection of your own personality.
Preinterpreting Scripture
The same is true when we do history and particularly when we examine the history of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) times and how we relate to that. We all grew up, if we knew the Bible from our early years, with a particular picture of who Yah'shua (Jesus) was, how the New Testament worked, and it was easy for us to assume that we were just reading it straight and unbiased, presupposing that 'that was how it was anciently'.
The Extremist Postmodern Response
Then we start to study the history and we get jolted this way, and knocked that way. New ideas come in, things shake us up. Then it is easy to imagine - and some in the Postmodern world have made this move - that actually all our knowing is just reflection - all we are really doing, they say, is bouncing our own ideas off a negative screen somewhere, so that we are not really in touch with things that actually happened. In renouncing the positivism that says, 'We aren't looking through our own lenses, we're just reading the text straight', we can then retreat into saying, 'No, we have to be so self-critical that really we don't know about anything in the outside world at all'.
The Twofold Nature of Critical Realism
Over and against both those extremist positions, many philosophers have developped something which is loosely called 'critical realism', though different people mean different things by that phrase. It is a double move by saying:
- 1. Yes, this is how I currently see it but I have to listen to all these other voices because they may well tell me things that I need to know about, giving me a slightly different perspective or maybe even a radically different perspective from what I thought I had. However,
- 2. This doesn't mean there isn't a reality that I'm still looking at - I don't need to dismantle or deconstruct everything and start all over again, as the Postmodernists do.
A Corporate Project
Hence 'critical realism'. This is the same exercise we go through in maturing relationships with other human beings, in relationship to history (whether it is the history of the 1st century, or of the Crusades, or of the Reformation, or of our own country). We go round this loop of saying, 'I have to be careful of my own prejudices and presuppositions' but that doesn't mean that nothing happened. So over against those two extreems, what we have to do in reading the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) is say, 'Something did happen, particularly these events concerning Yah'shua (Jesus), which we can in principle know about.' But history - this critical realist history - is a corporate enterprise. We need to have these other voices that may have seemed strange and bit upsetting to begin with - we need to pay attention to them, so that in dialogue with other people (because history, like all other academic subjects, is a public discipline, not simply a private game, which is why scholars publish things in books, articles and monographs). As we do that, we actually can get closer to the reality which we're all trying to study.
The Historical Messiah
The purpose of the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) is not to cause us to have 'nice feelings inside ourselves' but about discovering something to do with events that really did take place in the public world, the events concerning Yah'shua (Jesus), as a result of which - whether I feel it, whether I know it or not - the world is, in fact, a different place. Critical realism thus reflects the appropriate intellectual and personal humility when faced with the outside world in general but it also reflects the Christian/Messianic belief that in Yah'shua (Jesus) the Messiah, the Master, the one true Elohim (God) really has acted once and for all in history. He entered our world and changed it, and us, forever.
Acknowledgements
[1] N.T.Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (SPCK; London: 1992) - an in-depth study of Critical Realism and the definitive work on the subject
[2] N.T.Wright & Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians (SPCK/Zondervan Academic, London: 2019) - a summary of all Wright's historical and theological work that is rooted in critical realism
(29 July 2020)
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