Multiperspectivalism
Encyclopedia
Multiperspectivalism is an approach to knowledge
advocated by Calvinist
philosophers John Frame
and Vern Poythress
.
Frame laid out the idea with respect to a general epistemology in his 1987 work The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, where he suggests that in every act of knowing, the knower is in constant contact with three things (or "perspectives") – the knowing subject himself, the object of knowledge
, and the standard or criteria by which knowledge is attained. He argues that each perspective is interrelated to the others in such a fashion that, in knowing one of these, one actually knows the other two, also. Poythress developed the theme with respect to science
in his 1976 book Philosophy, Science, and the Sovereignty of God and with respect to theology
in his 1987 book Symphonic Theology.
is really like, and how knowledge should be sought. In his view, the marketplace of ideas is full of worldviews competing for the allegiance of each individual, and for some people, final allegiance to a system is due to sense experience, emotions, or political
affiliation, while for others it is their particular religious
tradition
(Judaism
, Islam
, Buddhism
, Bahá'í Faith
, etc.) or secular philosophy
(empiricism
, rationalism
, Marxism
, postmodernism
, etc.). Whatever serves as a person's final authority, Frame says, functions as his or her normative perspective.
Christians such as Frame believe that God
has verbally revealed
himself to mankind in the Bible
for the purpose of providing everything people need for life. In this view, Frame suggests, God’s inspired
word serves as the criteria by which all truth claims are to be checked, and God’s word dictates to humanity
who he is, the true nature of the world around us, and who people are in relation to God and the world. Thus, for Frame as for Calvin
, the Christian Scriptures serve as the lens
through which one ought to see and evaluate everything, and even in knowing the Bible, he suggests that one knows both the world and himself (and, conversely, in knowing them both one comes to know Scriptures better).
, science
, and evidences for various beliefs, and yet, science, history, and the evidences can never to be interpreted in a fashion that ignores or sets aside the binding nature of the normative perspective. Viewing things from Frame's situational perspective, one looks for how the normative perspective is expressed in everyday life.
Thus, without an understanding of the world, Frame says, one cannot rightly understand or apply Scripture to his or her life. For example, an argument against abortion
might run:
In Frame's scheme, the first point provides us with a normative command from the Bible, which serves as a timeless moral
principle. But in order to arrive at the conclusion one needs to know whether or not abortion is really the taking the life of an innocent, unborn person, which requires use of the situational perspective. One must consult medical examinations of the nature of a fetus
, the law of biogenesis
, and the abortion procedure itself, since without this crucial information one could never know whether the person was faithfully applying God’s word in one's life.
model of epistemology viewed the knowing enterprise as something hampered by human subjectivity and sought an objective mode of knowing that excludes Frame's existential perspective. Frame notes that the search for a purely objective knowledge is not only impossible, but also idolatrous. States Frame:
"Sometimes we dream fondly of a 'purely objective' knowledge of God—a knowledge of God of freed from the limitations of our senses, minds, experiences, preparation, and so forth. But nothing of this sort is possible, and God does not demand that of us. Rather, He condescends to dwell in and with us, as in a temple. He identifies himself in and through our thoughts, ideas, and experiences. And that identification is clear; it is adequate for Christian certainty. A 'purely objective' knowledge is precisely what we don’t want! Such knowledge would presuppose a denial of our creaturehood and thus a denial of God and of all truth." (DKG, 65)
, following Frame's model closely, calls these perspectives the rules, the self, and the world, and emphasizing the existential perspective, she states, "Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to its reality" (LTK, 1). Knowing in this sense is thus the process of integration by which one focuses on a pattern
by means of various clues in the world, one's body-sense, and the norms for thinking.
Through this integration process the clues take on greater significance such that they are no longer seemingly disconnected occurrences, but rather meaningful portions that make up a greater reality. Yet, it is claimed, the pattern or integration, once achieved, retroactively throws light on the "clues" that made it up. The particulars retain their meaningfulness, but it is enhanced and transformed. These patterns now shape the knower, because, ideally, they connect her with a reality independent of herself. One comes to see the fullness of the pattern when its truth is lived in (or "inhabited"), thus extending one's self out into the world by means of that truth.
Much of this pattern-making process is inarticulatable, but Frame and Meek believe this more-than-words aspect of epistemic acts cannot be ignored because he sees it as crucial in the common, everyday process of knowing.
, Poythress developed a multiperspectival approach, which he views as "a means of avoiding unhealthy dualism
" (Philosophy, p. 103).
in his Symphonic Theology.
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
advocated by Calvinist
Calvinism
Calvinism is a Protestant theological system and an approach to the Christian life...
philosophers John Frame
John Frame
John M. Frame is an American philosopher and Calvinist theologian especially noted for his work in epistemology and presuppositional apologetics, systematic theology, and ethics...
and Vern Poythress
Vern Poythress
Vern Sheridan Poythress is a Calvinist philosopher and theologian and New Testament scholar.-Biography:Poythress lived on his family farm in Madera, California until he was five years old and later moved with his family to Fresno, California...
.
Frame laid out the idea with respect to a general epistemology in his 1987 work The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, where he suggests that in every act of knowing, the knower is in constant contact with three things (or "perspectives") – the knowing subject himself, the object of knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...
, and the standard or criteria by which knowledge is attained. He argues that each perspective is interrelated to the others in such a fashion that, in knowing one of these, one actually knows the other two, also. Poythress developed the theme with respect to science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
in his 1976 book Philosophy, Science, and the Sovereignty of God and with respect to theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
in his 1987 book Symphonic Theology.
The normative perspective
Frame suggests that in all acts undertaken by humans there is some standard that serves as a guide, and that guide tells people what is the proper subject of inquiry, what actions they should pursue and avoid, what the universeUniverse
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
is really like, and how knowledge should be sought. In his view, the marketplace of ideas is full of worldviews competing for the allegiance of each individual, and for some people, final allegiance to a system is due to sense experience, emotions, or political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
affiliation, while for others it is their particular religious
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
tradition
Tradition
A tradition is a ritual, belief or object passed down within a society, still maintained in the present, with origins in the past. Common examples include holidays or impractical but socially meaningful clothes , but the idea has also been applied to social norms such as greetings...
(Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
, Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
, Bahá'í Faith
Bahá'í Faith
The Bahá'í Faith is a monotheistic religion founded by Bahá'u'lláh in 19th-century Persia, emphasizing the spiritual unity of all humankind. There are an estimated five to six million Bahá'ís around the world in more than 200 countries and territories....
, etc.) or secular philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
(empiricism
Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...
, rationalism
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
, Marxism
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
, postmodernism
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a philosophical movement evolved in reaction to modernism, the tendency in contemporary culture to accept only objective truth and to be inherently suspicious towards a global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. Postmodernist thought is an intentional departure from the...
, etc.). Whatever serves as a person's final authority, Frame says, functions as his or her normative perspective.
Christians such as Frame believe that God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
has verbally revealed
Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing, through active or passive communication with a supernatural or a divine entity...
himself to mankind in the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
for the purpose of providing everything people need for life. In this view, Frame suggests, God’s inspired
Biblical inspiration
Biblical inspiration is the doctrine in Christian theology that the authors and editors of the Bible were led or influenced by God with the result that their writings many be designated in some sense the word of God.- Etymology :...
word serves as the criteria by which all truth claims are to be checked, and God’s word dictates to humanity
Human Race
Human Race refers to the Human species.Human race may also refer to:*The Human Race, 79th episode of YuYu Hakusho* Human Race Theatre Company of Dayton Ohio* Human Race Machine, a computer graphics device...
who he is, the true nature of the world around us, and who people are in relation to God and the world. Thus, for Frame as for Calvin
John Calvin
John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...
, the Christian Scriptures serve as the lens
Perspective (cognitive)
Perspective in theory of cognition is the choice of a context or a reference from which to sense, categorize, measure or codify experience, cohesively forming a coherent belief, typically for comparing with another...
through which one ought to see and evaluate everything, and even in knowing the Bible, he suggests that one knows both the world and himself (and, conversely, in knowing them both one comes to know Scriptures better).
The situational perspective
With the situational perspective, Frame refers to the facts of reality or the objects of knowledge. With this perspective in mind, he says one must acknowledge the details of historyHistory
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, and evidences for various beliefs, and yet, science, history, and the evidences can never to be interpreted in a fashion that ignores or sets aside the binding nature of the normative perspective. Viewing things from Frame's situational perspective, one looks for how the normative perspective is expressed in everyday life.
Thus, without an understanding of the world, Frame says, one cannot rightly understand or apply Scripture to his or her life. For example, an argument against abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
might run:
- MurderMurderMurder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
is a sinSinIn religion, sin is the violation or deviation of an eternal divine law or standard. The term sin may also refer to the state of having committed such a violation. Christians believe the moral code of conduct is decreed by God In religion, sin (also called peccancy) is the violation or deviation...
. - Abortion is murder.
- Therefore abortion is a sin.
In Frame's scheme, the first point provides us with a normative command from the Bible, which serves as a timeless moral
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
principle. But in order to arrive at the conclusion one needs to know whether or not abortion is really the taking the life of an innocent, unborn person, which requires use of the situational perspective. One must consult medical examinations of the nature of a fetus
Fetus
A fetus is a developing mammal or other viviparous vertebrate after the embryonic stage and before birth.In humans, the fetal stage of prenatal development starts at the beginning of the 11th week in gestational age, which is the 9th week after fertilization.-Etymology and spelling variations:The...
, the law of biogenesis
Biogenesis
Biogenesis is the law that living things come only from other living things, e.g. a spider lays eggs, which develop into spiders. It may also refer to biochemical processes of production in living organisms.-Spontaneous generation:...
, and the abortion procedure itself, since without this crucial information one could never know whether the person was faithfully applying God’s word in one's life.
The existential perspective
With the existential perspective, Frame draws attention back to the person doing the knowing because, he says, individuals bring their personal dispositions, temperaments, biases, presuppositions, and life experiences to every act of knowing. A problem common to all epistemological endeavors is that if one tries to formulate a true-to-life epistemology, one apparently must examine each and every action performed, but formulating every action into propositions for evaluation is quite tricky. For this reason, the EnlightenmentAge of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
model of epistemology viewed the knowing enterprise as something hampered by human subjectivity and sought an objective mode of knowing that excludes Frame's existential perspective. Frame notes that the search for a purely objective knowledge is not only impossible, but also idolatrous. States Frame:
"Sometimes we dream fondly of a 'purely objective' knowledge of God—a knowledge of God of freed from the limitations of our senses, minds, experiences, preparation, and so forth. But nothing of this sort is possible, and God does not demand that of us. Rather, He condescends to dwell in and with us, as in a temple. He identifies himself in and through our thoughts, ideas, and experiences. And that identification is clear; it is adequate for Christian certainty. A 'purely objective' knowledge is precisely what we don’t want! Such knowledge would presuppose a denial of our creaturehood and thus a denial of God and of all truth." (DKG, 65)
Integration of the perspectives
Frame argues that in order to appreciate the richness of the human knowing process, one must see that every instance of knowing involves these three perspectives. Esther MeekEsther Meek
Esther Lightcap Meek is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Geneva College, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, and a freelance writer and speaker. She was formerly Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Covenant Theological Seminary, in St. Louis, Missouri...
, following Frame's model closely, calls these perspectives the rules, the self, and the world, and emphasizing the existential perspective, she states, "Knowing is the responsible human struggle to rely on clues to focus on a coherent pattern and submit to its reality" (LTK, 1). Knowing in this sense is thus the process of integration by which one focuses on a pattern
Pattern
A pattern, from the French patron, is a type of theme of recurring events or objects, sometimes referred to as elements of a set of objects.These elements repeat in a predictable manner...
by means of various clues in the world, one's body-sense, and the norms for thinking.
Through this integration process the clues take on greater significance such that they are no longer seemingly disconnected occurrences, but rather meaningful portions that make up a greater reality. Yet, it is claimed, the pattern or integration, once achieved, retroactively throws light on the "clues" that made it up. The particulars retain their meaningfulness, but it is enhanced and transformed. These patterns now shape the knower, because, ideally, they connect her with a reality independent of herself. One comes to see the fullness of the pattern when its truth is lived in (or "inhabited"), thus extending one's self out into the world by means of that truth.
Much of this pattern-making process is inarticulatable, but Frame and Meek believe this more-than-words aspect of epistemic acts cannot be ignored because he sees it as crucial in the common, everyday process of knowing.
Science
With respect to scienceScience
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
, Poythress developed a multiperspectival approach, which he views as "a means of avoiding unhealthy dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
" (Philosophy, p. 103).
Theology
Poythress further expounded a multiperspectival approach to theologyTheology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
in his Symphonic Theology.