CARL HENRYS GOD, REVELATION AND AUTHORITY:

MODERNIST, FOUNDATIONALIST

METHODOLOGY?

__________________

A Paper

Presented to

Dr. Joseph Wooddell

Criswell College

__________________

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for PHI 502

__________________

by

Michael Metts

May 18, 2014

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................1

Modernity and Foundationalism ..................................................................................1

Ren Descartes ....................................................................................................2

John Locke ..........................................................................................................3

Foundationalism ..................................................................................................5

Carl Henry's Theological Method ...............................................................................6

Charges of Foundationalism ........................................................................................9

Postconservative Criticism ..................................................................................9

Postliberal Criticism ..........................................................................................12

Answering the Criticism ............................................................................................13

CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................16

BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................................................................................18

1

CARL HENRYS GOD, REVELATION AND AUTHORITY:

MODERNIST, FOUNDATIONALIST

METHODOLOGY?

Whether a result of the rapid spread of postmodernism following the linguistic turn in

philosophy, or the growing influence of narrative theologians of the Yale school, evangelical

theologians are becoming increasingly favorable towards postmodern approaches to

understanding Christian doctrine. In this age of postmodern influence, the propositionalism

evidenced in former evangelical theologies has been criticized as modernist, foundationalist

philosophy by recent critics. Chiefly among those criticized is neo-evangelical Carl F. H. Henry

(1913-2003). This paper will examine Henrys theological method for evidences of modernist,

foundationalist philosophical influence, limited in scope to selections from the first and third

volume of his magnum opus, God, Revelation and Authority, and evaluate both postconservative

and postliberal criticisms of his work. The conclusion is that while Henry does display a weak

foundationalist influence, it is of an entirely different sort than the anthropocentric rationalism of

Enlightenment thinkers.

Modernity and Foundationalism

Beginning with the work of geometrician1 and founder of modern philosophy Ren

1On the importance of geometry for Descartes and his philosophy see Colin Brown, From the Ancient

World to the Age of Enlightenment, in Christianity and Western Thought: A History of Philosophers, Ideas and

Movements, vol 1, (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1990; reprint 2010) 178-84. Descartess ideal and method

was modelled on mathematics (179). Brown quotes Descartes himself in his modernist and inestimably influential

work Discourse on Method: Those long chains composed of very simple and easy reasonings, which geometers

customarily use to arrive at their most difficult demonstrations, had given me occasion to suppose that all things

2

Descartes (1596-1650), but also inclusive of the rationalist empiricist philosopher John Locke

(1632-1704), is a period in which an anthropocentric innate reason came to be seen as the chief

judge of truth; the pursuit of a truth by which all knowledge is to be grounded or founded in

certainty is called foundationalism.

Ren Descartes

Descartes, troubled by the conflicting claims which erupted in the Reformation,

discerned the need for a deeper foundation, a means of establishing certainty and authority that

could act as the proper and exclusive fulcrum of judgment concerning biblical interpretation and

varying traditions.2 It should be observed here that Descartes does not operate as an empiricist,

as does Locke, but solely as an innatist-rationalist. Since Descartes was a studied geometrician,

his philosophy was deeply influenced by the fine exactitude of geometrys developmentally

established theorems and proven axioms. Just as the axioms of geometry were built one upon

another, so would be Descartes method of establishing truth. All that remained was establishing

a point of origin for all subsequent truths, which Descartes found not in God, much to the

detriment of theology, but in his own anthropocentric reason cogito, ergo sum (I think,

therefore I am). That Descartes could doubt demonstrated that he existed indubitably.3 This was

which can fall under human knowledge are interconnected in the same way (179-80).

2W. P. Abraham, epistemology, religious, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian

Thought, ed. Alister E. McGrath, et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993) 156. Calvinist theologian and philosopher Gordon

Haddon Clark writes the following concerning Cartesian philosophy: if only a single point be found solid, then like

Archimedes we can move the universe. The meaning is that the beginning foundationalist point acts as authoritative

and certain for subsequent axioms within the system, all of which can be demonstrated as truthful. Clark, The Works

of Gordon Haddon Clark, Christian Philosophy, vol. 4 (Unicoi, TN: The Trinity Foundation, 2004), 141.

3If we are deceived, we must be thinking; and if we think, we exist it is impossible to deny I am

thinking without thinking. Since doubting is a form of thought, I cannot doubt that I think without thinking the

doubt. I think, therefore, is an indubitable truth. Clark, The Works of Gordon Haddon Clark, 142.

3

the first principle of his philosophy as he explains in his Discourse on Method:

But immediately I noticed that while I am trying thus to think everything false, it was

necessary that I, who was thinking this, was something. And observing that this truth I am

thinking, therefore I exist was so firm and sure that all the most suppositions of the

sceptics were incapable of shaking it, I decided that I could accept it without scruple as the

first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.4

The existence of God as a perfect being was Descartes second principle and the

effects of this subordination would become forcibly prescriptive for the discipline of theological

science until the present day.5 It was as a rationalist, therefore, that Descartes main argument

for the existence of God was a restatement of Anselms ontological argument.6 In the Age of

Reason, God came to be grounded in proofs established by the mind of man.

John Locke

Locke continued heavily in the rationalist tradition of Descartes. As a rationalist-

empiricist Locke also grounded the existence of God in the power of the human intellect to the

end that the truths of theism were seen according to reason, rather than revelation.7 To be fair,

Locke does allow room for divine revelation though to what degree is debated but reason

4Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 180; quoting Descartes, Discourse on

Method, Part 4.

5Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 181. Cf. also Abraham, epistemology,

religious, 156, reason becomes the foundation upon which the whole of Christian theology has to be erected

methodically.

6Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 182. Concerning Anselm, however,

Descartes failed to recognize that the intellectual feats of the Proslogion operated within the context of faith

seeking understanding. Cf. Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 6 vols. (Waco, TX: Word Books,

1976-83; reprint Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999) 1:300: the Anselmic tendency commended the ontological

argument to later modern philosophers aligned in revolt against special revelation.

7Abraham, epistemology, religious, 157. In John Locke we see how a deeply pious Christian and

philosopher works out a rational case for Christianity. The cosmological and teleological arguments prove the

existence of God; so the truth of theism is according to reason (157).

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must be judge and guide in everything.8 The order of operations, to put it in one sense, is

understanding seeking faith rather than the reverse which is the hallmark of any evangelical

theological tradition certainly the hallmark of a neo-evangelical heritage.

Like Descartes, Locke was also troubled by the many religious opinions of his day.

This existence of so many different and conflicting opinions was partly cause for his important

work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Noted philosopher Alvin Plantinga explains

Lockes influential work as follows:

The Essay was Lockes attempt to do what he could to put matters right. Book IV, Of

Knowledge and Probability, is the end of the book both in comprising the last three

hundred pages or so and in dealing with the question whose resolution is Lockes goal; and

even in book IV he spends another two hundred pages before explicitly addressing it. That

main question is: how should we regulate our opinions with respect to belief in general? In

particular, how should we regulate our opinion with respect to religious belief?9

Locke was further knowledgeable of Newtonian science which understood the

universe in a closed, mechanistic causal manner; and mindful of the implications of Newtonian

science concerning the possibility of miracles.10

Miracles such as resurrection were understood

by Locke to be above reason, meaning that the trustworthiness of their propositions could not

8Abraham, epistemology, religious, 157. Cf. also Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of

Enlightenment, 222: Locke rejected the rationalist idea that the mind had stamped on it from birth certain primary,

self-evident notions. He likewise repudiated the idea, found in Cicero by Calvin and his followers, that human

beings have a sense of the deity inscribed on their hearts. Brown quotes Locke, An Essay Concerning Human

Understanding, 4.18.2: Reason is the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which

the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it has got by the use of its natural faculties, viz. by

sensation or reflection.

9Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) 74.

(Emphasis original.)

10Newtons laws of motion helped to establish the mechanical view of the universe which dominated

physics down to modern times. Newtons Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) gave an account

not only of the motion of bodies on the earth but throughout the universe. Newtons views raised big questions for

theology. Where did God fit into this mechanistic world? Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of

Enlightenment, 218.

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be established by reason.11

Foundationalism

It is clear from the two aforementioned modernists that mans own innate reason is

both generative and formative for propositional beliefs, and that this rationalism should operate

under such conditions that any knowledge or belief claim made by a person must be

authoritatively founded so as to be indubitable to his or her modern mind. Due to the nature of

foundationalism, axioms of knowledge which form a part of any intellectual structure are only

upheld when the source of such knowledge is indubitably grounded. Descartes used the

metaphor of building knowledge on an absolute foundation, hoping to free us from tradition-

based knowledge.12

And according to Locke, a belief is acceptable only if it is either itself

certain with respect to propositions that are certain for me.13

The principle at work in the rationalist philosophy of both Descartes and Locke is

simply a critical concern to establish a proposition on the basis of another which is

unquestionably sound beyond criticism. However, evidenced within the foundationalism of

Descartes and Locke is a rationalist effort for founding knowledge within an anthropocentric

standard of universal reason; meaning that truthful propositions cannot be located externally

from mans own independent creaturely ability to rationalize.14

Rationalism is operative in

11Brown, From the Ancient World to the Age of Enlightenment, 224. See also Clark, The Works of

Gordon Haddon Clark, 142, who writes: Lockes view of revelation may be a little too complicated, or possibly too

disguised, to describe accurately. Although he seems to have admitted the fact of revelation, some interpreters judge

it to be grudging admission.

12David K. Clark, To Know and Love God: Method for Theology, Foundations of Evangelical Theology

Series (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003) 153.

13Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 81.

14Cf. Alvin Plantinga, The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology, in Christian Scholars Review

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relation to the thinking subject and must be governed by the modern mind, and this, as noted

above, includes the truths of theistic beliefs. Revelation springs forth from mans reason

Carl Henrys Theological Method

No matter what starting point a reader may choose, it rapidly becomes apparent when

reading God, Revelation and Authority that Henry identifies any means of discerning truth which

does not posit at first divine revelation as fundamentally flawed. Before examining the structures

of his theological method, a few points concerning Henrys work will help reveal his reasons for

criticizing modernity and the compromises of its rationalistic and anthropocentric

foundationalism.

According to Henry, Descartes mistakenly proclaims mans own ego, or individual

intelligence, as the first certainty.15

The fundamental distinction between Henrys methodology

and any modernist one is identified by this claim more than anywhere else it is found here.

Henrys concern is not expressive of a disinterest in philosophy or philosophers, on the contrary

he understands both philosophy and theology to operate within the same plane of objective

reference;16

his concern is rather indicative of a proper Christian appreciation for an externalist

divine revelation standing sharply opposed to any anthropocentric innatism such as that found in

the foundationalism of Descartes.17

Whereas modernity posited mans own rational and

epistemic faculties as the grounds of authority and certainty, Henry grounds certainty in divine

11 no. 3 (1982): 187-198.

15Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:302.

16Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:200.

17Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:76, 301-8.

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revelation.18

The truths of God and therefore of his creation are divinely granted to the divinely

enabled knower. But this is not to deny that an atheist or agnostic might have true knowledge of

the natural, created world. A lengthier account of Enlightenment rationalism seen opposed to

revelation is given by Henry in volume three and may help to clarify the difference:

There was never a denial that the mind of man has the power, on which recent modern

knowledge-theory concentrates, of conceptually ordering phenomenal realities or sense

impressions in a creative way. But the human mind was not considered to be constructive of

the order of external reality. As the source of created existence, the Logos of God grounded

the meaning and purpose of man and the world, and objective reality was held to be

divinely structured by complex formal patterns. Endowed with more than animal

perception, gifted in fact with a mode of cognition not to be confused with sensation, man

was therefore able to intuit intelligible universals; as a divinely intended knower, he was

able to cognize, within limits, the nature and structure of the externally real world.19

So, against a modernist internalist grounding of truth, Henry propounds that God has

revealed himself. There are in fact ontic referents to the knowing individual since he is within

Gods created world; is himself a creature of this creation; and is in fact created in the image of

God. Henry writes, Reason is a divinely gifted instrument enabling man to recognize revelation

or truth. He can do this because by creation he bears the image of God (Gen. 1:26), and is

specially lighted by the divine Logos (John 1:9)20

This understanding of Henry's subsumes

the entire Enlightenment project within an anthropocentric logos (or reason), showing man to be

lost in his own efforts at rationalizing the natural world apart from divinely granted revelation.

Rightly understood, divine revelation for Christians is a philosophical a priori, and not a

subjective conclusion of human reasoning.21

18Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:213-224.

19Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 3:167.

20Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:228.

21Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:201: The Christian revelation is not to be confronted by

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The first three criteria of Henrys theological method are of primary importance for

understanding Henry: (1) God in his revelation is the first principle of Christian theology, from

which all the truths of revealed religion are derived; (2) Human reason is a divinely fashioned

instrument for recognizing truth; it is not a creative source of truth; and (3) The Bible is the

Christians principle of verification.22

These criteria do function, in a sense, foundationally for

Henry and his subsequent theses concerning theology, but there are critical distinctions between

the sort of modernist epistemologies observed beforehand and the grounding of knowledge that

Henry conceptualizes.

Henry sees himself standing within an evangelical theological tradition beginning with

Augustine followed by Anselm, Luther and Calvin.23

Each of these theologians enshrine a faith

seeking understanding approach, in one fashion or another, where the epistemic knower is

divinely gifted with reasoning faculties which by design include knowledge of the objective

created world, of God himself, and of others. Gods revelation is what is foundational if the

critic insists that Henry evidences such an epistemology and man by created design is able to

rationalize, not of his own innate potential, but as consequence of his operative creaturely

faculties gifted to him by the Creator. Authority is established, therefore, clearly by God and

revelation. Hopefully, then, the reader of Henry is able to understand the meaning of his projects

title: God, Revelation and Authority. More desirable would be for the reader to see Henry as

already prescribed philosophical conceptions to which its content must be conformed.

22Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:215, 1:225, and 1:229.

23Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:76-7, 183-4, 303-4, 288-300, 322, 323-43.

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establishing as part of evangelical Christian identity a theology clearly owing no debts to the

works targeted modernist opponents who champion a very obvious different rationality.

Charges of Foundationalism

There have been numerous objections to Henrys work categorizing him as a

rationalist, foundationalist, or propositionalist, each understood in the modernist sense or as

influenced by it; and this is so despite the incredible aforementioned labors of Henry to present

his work in the traditions of Augustine and the Reformers, and, more particularly, as a corrective

to the modernist innatism of Cartesian indebted speculative philosophies. Several critics are

presented here, all of which evidence a clear absence of a careful understanding of Henry in this

regard; the reader finds, rather, a readiness by critics to categorize Henry within an outdated fold

of theologians whose work is considered foundationalist philosophy, chiefly headed by the Old

Princetonian Charles Hodge. Critics of Henry, then, can be divided into one of two camps: (1)

The postconservative camp, including Henry H. Knight III, Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke,

and Roger E. Olson. And (2) the postliberal camp, including George A. Lindbeck and Hans W.

Frei.

Postconservative Criticism

Henry H. Knight III, a postconservative evangelical theologian, writes the following

of conservatives: The propositionalist approach, while seeking to be faithful to scripture, has

been led by its apologetic concern to embrace many of the presuppositions of the

Enlightenment.24

Knight continues his criticism by primarily targeting Henry as the crown

24Henry H. Knight III, A Future for Truth: Evangelical Theology in a Postmodern World (Nashville:

Abingdon Press, 1997) 90.

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thinker of such approaches and explicitly associates his theological method with Cartesianism.

He states:

Such rationalism enshrines the Cartesian mind/body dualism within theology, and defines

revelation as the mind of God communicating information to the human mind. The essence

of the imago Dei and presumably of God is rationality, understood as a cognitive and

logical capacity.25

While the connection with Descartes is qualified more fairly than certain other critics, an

obviously absent distinction between the innatism of Cartesian philosophy and the externalist

and divinely gifted rationality in the understanding of Henry is confronting. The reader may also

be excused for wondering how critics like Knight make the connection between Henry and

Descartes to begin with, when the former has written extensively critical of the latter and is

solely concerned to correct his philosophical speculative influence. It seems that it is Henrys

propositional understanding of Scripture that incriminates him as a Cartesian:

If revelation is both rational and true, then Henry believes that it must also be in the

form of propositions. A proposition is a verbal statement that is either true or false; it is a

rational declaration capable of being either believed, doubted, or denied. () It is no

surprise, then, that Henry finds the Bible to be essentially composed of propositions 26

propositionalists often see themselves as the defenders of historic Christianity against the

corrosive forces of modernity. Certainly that is their intent. They are apt to see those who

question strict inerrancy as capitulating to modern relativism and abandoning objective

truth27

In their mutual criticism against foundationalism, postfoundationalists Stanley J.

Grenz and John R. Franke also identify Descartes foundationalism with late nineteenth and

25Knight, A Future for Truth, 91.

26Knight, A Future for Truth, 88; citing Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 3:456.

27Knight, A Future for Truth, 90.

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twentieth-century evangelical propositionalist theologies, connecting Henry with them.28

The

claim is made that such theology is buoyed by the assumptions of modernity.29

Also likening

Henrys method to that of Hodge, Grenz and Franke criticize:

conservative theologians also searched for a foundation for theology that could stand

firm when subjected to the canons of a supposedly universal human reason. Conservatives

came to conclude that this invulnerable foundation lay in an error-free Bible, which they

viewed as the storehouse for divine revelation. Hence, the great Princeton theologian,

Charles Hodge, asserted that the Bible is free from all error, whether of doctrine, fact, or

precept. This inerrant foundation, in turn, could endow with epistemological certitude, at

least in theory, the edifice the skilled theological craftsman constructed on it.30

A lengthy case is presented demonstrating conservative evangelical theology, wrongly thinking

itself as an heir of Reformation epistemology, is actually none other than a modernist

foundationalism indebted to the rationalist philosophy of Descartes.31

This is said to be the case

because an inerrant Scripture forms the foundation for Henrys theological truth claims, rather

than God and creaturely epistemic realities of reason. However, the error free Bible that Grenz

and Olson want to posit within Henrys foundationalism is rather the result of it, and developed

within the context of a greater, more foundational theological method. But in defense of their

own postfoundationalist theology, they write:

Above all, however, postmodern, chastened rationality entails the rejection of

epistemological foundationalism. In the modern era, the pursuit of knowledge was deeply

influenced by the thought forms of the Enlightenment, with foundationalism lying at its

heart. The goal of the foundationalist agenda is the discovery of an approach to knowledge

that will provide rational human being with absolute, incontestable certainty regarding the

truthfulness of their beliefs. According to foundationalists, the acquisition of knowledge

28Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern

Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001) 3-54.

29Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 13.

30Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 34.

31Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 29-35.

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ought to proceed in a manner somewhat similar to the construction of a building.

Knowledge must be built on a sure foundation.32

Roger E. Olson is one more critic of foundationalism who shows sentiment for the

work of Grenz and Franke and their postfoundationalist criticism of Henry.33

As for his own

criticism, Olson somewhat equivocally writes,

Although Henry was not a classical rationalist in the Cartesian sense he did tend to

elevate reason to a special governing role in Christian theology and he regarded revelation

as primarily an intellectual phenomenon. According to Henry, Divine revelation is a

mental activity. For him, Gods self-revelation is an intelligible disclosure that possesses

propositional expressibility, which makes it amenable to rational systematization. He

eschewed any probabilistic approach to theology and sought for certainty for theologys

conclusions (doctrines) based on logical deduction from foundational axioms.34

Again, indebtedness to Descartes is posited of Henry indirectly through identifying

both thinkers with rationalist foundationalism, while also neglecting an explicit demonstration of

how such a connection is made other than to generalize about Henrys rationalist theological

method.

Postliberal Criticism

Probably more influential of the theological methodological mood in evangelical

theology than any sincere desire to move beyond an understood and operative modernist

rationalism is the book highly regarded within evangelical circles: The Nature of Doctrine.35

George A. Lindbecks own method, as more conservative critics have properly assailed, is in

32Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 23.

33Roger E. Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming: The Postconservative Approach to Evangelical

Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007) 130-1.

34Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming, 130.

35George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th

Anniversary ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 2009).

13

essence a sociological impression of religious community rules without much remaining for

attribution to divine revelation. Doctrines have propositional value only within believing

communities, or propositional values only in a strict functionalist sense.36

But attempting to

understand how objective truth might function within such a model clearly initiates confusion

when it is recognized that different communities believe different things.

Lindbecks work has had a far reaching impact in the discussion of both ecumenism

and theological method, even within evangelicalism as some pockets become increasingly

favorable of sociological and communal models of theological doctrine, e.g., Grenz and Franke,

against a divinely revealed, rationally intelligible model such as found in the work of Henry.

Why this is so continues to impress anyone who observes theology to include in any meaningful

way divine revelation. For, what is revealed becomes essential to doctrine as opposed to what a

religious community might value. But this is getting too far ahead.

With his colleague Lindbeck, Hans W. Frei also dismisses Henry, criticizing his

method as foundationalism. Writing of Henry, Frei states: the basic affirmation [is] that

theology must have a foundation that is articulated in terms of basic philosophical principles.37

Answering the Criticism

While critics are united in their association of Henry with foundationalist rationalism,

and perhaps they are correct to a degree, their criticisms seem to regard only the form of Henrys

method and not its specific content; content which might go a long way in providing clues as to

why Henry dismisses his so-called modernist philosophical parentage. Of course in philosophy

36Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine, 50-1.

37Hans W. Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. by George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) 24.

14

one is always philosophizing, even when one thinks otherwise, and Henry is no exception. But

is it right to dismiss so readily as simply modernistic foundationalism a project as extensive as

God, Revelation and Authority simply because it bears some semblance in structure with

foundationalist philosophy, without looking more closely at the internal workings which might

explain such a similarity? Is such similarity only superficial?

For some critics who are so poorly read of Henry, the assumption is that the

foundation upon which he builds is the inerrancy of Scripture. Henry is camped with those who

espouse an unassailable and bulletproof textbook for scientific and propositional compilation,

devoid of any meaningful emotive aspects of religious authority. Again, it invites curiosity on the

part of the student, however, to question how such conclusions are reached, for they are not

reached certainly by reading God, Revelation and Authority. Gods general revelation of himself

to the rational conscience of every man is what is foundational for Henry, i.e., the imago Dei, not

the inerrant Scriptures. In the ordering of his volumes it is no mistake that the subject of

inerrancy in Henrys work does not arise for definite treatment until volume four, which is

certainly a delayed treatment for any theologian who might regard such doctrine as foundational

for all his subsequent theological theorems. Such ordering would be tantamount to placing

prolegomena after treating the dogmas of God and Scripture perhaps creation as well.

Henrys theological, philosophical structuralization of revealed biblical theism, as he

likes to refer to it, also follows no clear pattern of basing one proposition upon another in the

manner of the geometrist mind of Descartes or subsequent internalist speculative philosophies. It

may be granted, however, that to a certain degree such statements of Henry as follows do

evidence a very broad foundationalist structure:

Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of Christianity included; reason is the

instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying principle; logical consistency is a

15

negative test for truth and coherence a subordinate test. The task of Christian theology is

to exhibit the content of biblical revelation as an orderly whole.38

This is, according to Henry, his governing theological method in concentrated form.

While such methodology may evidence a degree of foundationalism, it could only be a very

weak form as opposed to the strong foundationalism resulting from the troubled conscience of

Descartes. But to this the critical mind beckons us: Do we all not, as Alvin Plantinga has written,

have a sort of noetic structure that believes some things on the basis of others? Is not

foundationalism to a certain extent part of common sensibilities, understood in no

philosophically distinguished way? Even in the carefully written work of Grenz and Franke one

finds language betraying weak foundationalist philosophical influence, such as their view that

the church functions, as in Lindbeck, as a basis in establishing doctrinal values. In fact, the

term basis appears numerous times throughout the postfoundationalist work of Grenz and

Franke, and frequently in the form of very telling interrogative sentences such as on what basis

something critically can be held. The term is also found in critical subheadings and in

conclusions to critical motifs. In their chapter on the community as an integrative motif, The

Basis of Theology is observed as a subheading; and again in the chapter on eschatology, The

Basis for an Eschatological Theology.39

38Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, 1:215. (Emphasis original.)

39Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 232, 252. Additional mention of basis is found in the

following places: 90, Reading the Bible as one canon forms the basis of reading the texts of the Hebrews as

Christian scripture, and it suggests what constitutes the interpretive center for reading both Testaments together.;

160, But on what basis and in what sense can we speak of culture as the voice of the Spirit?; 253, We maintain,

therefore, that an eschatological theology is closely connected to the biblical narrative. But on what basis can we

make this claim?; 259, We have outlined as well the basis for the claim that the way toward an eschatological

theology leads through the biblical narrative, the story of Gods action in history, which cradles the Christian

community. There are at least twenty additional uses of the term in their work in the sense revealed here. Are we

really beyond foundations if we still need to base components of an evangelical theology?

16

But all of this misses the point. Henry has labored to establish philosophical

categories for theological truth, a Christian philosophy of ontology, epistemology, axioms, etc.,

and not as a foundationalist but in accordance with long recognized truths, such as God as

Creator, man as made in his image, man as an intelligible, thinking, and reflective creature, and

revelation as cognitive, rational communication. The universal rationality of man and his clear

ability to think reflectively, critically and intelligibly, was the will of the Creator who gifted man

with such abilities. With critics nowhere showing appreciation for Henrys content and the

notion that it may be driving perceived foundationalism, rather than the reverse, one question in

particular becomes gravitational: Why have we dismissed his work? It presses the student to

wonder if postconservative evangelical critics are simply yielding to the critical pressures of the

university postmodern ethos by acquiescing to the hazardous path forward charted by

postliberals. For it is within the anti-authoritative ethos of postmodernism that the critique of

reason extends beyond the works of any source and applies directly to the point of origin for any

source; meaning, perhaps, Henry has been discredited, not because of any contradiction

discoverable within his work, but because the postmodernist critique circumnavigates the work

in question and applies itself directly to the thinking mind operative behind it. This is clearly

incompatible with Christianity which without question understands truth only with a capital t.

Conclusion

By dismissing it based on form without regard for its content, the work of Henry will

continue to haunt conservative evangelicals who have capitulated with the postmodernist ethos

and have no demonstrable or agreed means of progressing forward of their own making within

such an ethos; and no means by which divine revelation can function authoritatively within the

sphere of creation. As both a philosopher and a theologian Henry answers speculative modernist

17

philosophies while providing structure for an evangelical mind that is biblical, defensible, and

incorporative of reason.

While he may be identified as a weak foundationalist, the student of Henry wonders if

his shallow dismissal by critics may somewhat mirror the early churchs dismissal of Aristotle,

before Augustine saw fit to plunder the Egyptians and retake all truth as Gods, thus saving

classicism in the process. Like Aristotles later renewal in medieval theology, the critics may

find that their dismissal of Henry will only result in his return at a later time to become

influentially formative again for future evangelical theologies.

18

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