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Evangelical critics  critics of "liberalism" allege that its hallmark was-and is-Ita was—and is—a cognitive relativism." By making experience the one and only primal primal (noetic) source of theology, liberalism condemned theology to be like all other human other human efforts to know and to understand. It thereby became simply one more one more part of "the human quest for understanding , . . . which is one undertaken one undertaken from within the flux of human experience employing the tools available tools available to human experimenters" and never yielding "any certainty beyond that beyond that of an interim report offered from within the fallabilities infallabilities of the fragile, human  human psyche." In thus becoming "relative and fallible," like all other human other human knowledge, theology becomes quite different from "the kind of knowledge of knowledge given by revelation"(David Wells: 179,174). It confuses  

But this charge of "cognitive relativism" cannot be sustained. It confuses what may very well be only a critical, nondogmatic attitude toward claims toward claims to validity (and authority) with a relativistic attitude according to which to which all such claims, being valid for each of the individuals or groups who make who make or imply them, must be accepted as equally valid. Conversely, those who those who make this charge typically seek to commend their own uncritical, dogmatic  dogmatic attitude toward (at least certain) claims to validity (and authority) by arguing by arguing that any other attitude either is or necessarily devolves into relativisminto relativism. Significantly, liberals or radicals who think of themselves as holding as holding an extreme contrary position to that of evangelicals, reason in essentially in essentially the same way-inferringway—inferring, as Gordon Kaufman does, for example, that  that any claim to absolute truth has to be given up if one is to maintain a consistently a consistently critical, nondogmatic attittude toward nondogmatic attitude toward claims to validity (and authority). 2Enlightenment, as distinct from positions that may have been held by thinkers representing themselves, or represented by others, as belonging to the (normative) Enlightenment tradition. Enlightenment means, normatively, not anti-traditionalism, but,if one may say so, antiuncriticalism, anti-dogmatism-including such expressions of an uncritical, dogmatic attitude as may well characterize persons taking non-or even antitraditionalist positions. 20December 1991But this charge of "cognitive relativism" cannot be sustained.and authority). 

My question is whether the whole anti-foundationalist polemic of many of many contemporary philosophers doesn't involve something like the same confusionsame confusion. One is not, or need not be, a foundationalist simply because one insists one insists that our claims to validity (and authority) be critically validated somehow validated somehow by reason and experience. Or, alternatively, if such an insistence simply insistence simply as such makes one properly a foundationalist, then being a foundationalist a foundationalist is nothing to be ashamed of, or apologized for. Nor can an uncriticalan uncritical, dogmatic anti-traditionalism be foisted off onto thethe Enlightenment, as distinct from positions that may have been held by thinkers representing themselves, or represented by others, as belonging to the (normative)  Enlightenment  tradition. Enlightenment means, normatively, not anti-traditionalism, but, if one may say so, anti­uncriticalism, anti-dogmatism—including such expressions of an uncritical, dogmatic attitude as may well characterize persons taking non- or even anti­traditionalist positions. 

20 December 1991