Research Paper Framework (Part 13)

Excerpt from, “From social justice warrior to Gospel-centered servant of God: An educator’s reflection on critical theory and Christianity” (Linkletter, 2021).

This research project is not coming from the critical theoretical framework, which is most often used within education and psychology.

Rather, it is coming from a biblical worldview.

It is important to make the distinction between my Christian understanding of knowledge, belief, and truth versus the critical theoretical framework’s understanding of knowledge, belief, and truth because how we understand and value these things is the foundation for how we interact with, and think about, our reality.

In this section I will illuminate my decision to approach this research from a biblical worldview by unpacking my worldview and understanding of epistemology.

Epistemology is the “branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature, sources, and justification of belief and knowledge” (Peterson et al., 2010, p. 632). Knowledge can be acquired in three ways: by acquaintance, by know-how, or by description (Moreland & Craig, 2003, p. 72).

There are three ways we gain knowledge of God:

1) through the created world (general revelation),

2) through the inspired word (special revelation), and

3) through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit apart from external evidence (Barnett, 2018).

Our knowledge must be accompanied by belief; “belief is a necessary condition for knowledge,” but merely believing something does not make it knowledge (Moreland & Craig, 2003, p. 73).

Truth has been a question of contention through the ages. The correspondence theory of truth goes back to at least Aristotle and has been accepted by most philosophers. It is “the idea that truth is a matter of a proposition corresponding to reality; truth obtains when reality is the way a proposition represents it to be” (Moreland & Craig, 2003, p. 130; Herrick, 2000, p. 597). This theory of truth has been challenged since we have culturally embraced postmodernism, and especially since the rise of the social justice movement, which reject the existence of objective truth (Dreher, 2020, p. 61; Ferrer & Pearcey, 2019).

The biblical conception of truth has two components: faithfulness and conformity to fact. Conformity to fact relates to the correspondence theory of truth and faithfulness can be understood as a “person’s actions corresponding to the person’s assertions or promises” (Moreland & Craig, 2003, p. 131).

Rebecca

References

Dreher, Rod. (2020). Live not by lies: A manual for Christian dissidents. Sentinel.

Ferrer, M., & Pearcey, N. (2019). Mama bear apologetics: Empowering your kids to challenge cultural lies. Harvest House Publishers.

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2003). Philosophical foundations for a Christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.