Christian Psychology
51
of subjectivity-versus-objectivity (abstract, pp. 7.1, 10.1,
10.2, 14.1, 15.2-16.1), “values, assumptions, and inter-
pretations” (p. 6.2, 14.2, 15.2), “metaphysical claims”
and “scientific methods” (p. 7.2), “faith” (p. 12.2),
“beliefs” (p. 11.2) and “a belief system” (p. 14.1), “error”
or “bad[ness]” (pp. 9.1, 15.2), “value-laden[ness]” (p.
10.2), scientific “laws” as “‘useful’ and ‘productive’” (p.
14.1), and “‘prejudice’” (pp. 15.2-16.1). The predomi-
nant implication is that bias is subjective and negative
although the matter remains ambiguous: Bias is bad in
the article’s criticism of naturalism, but bias and preju-
dice turn out to be something welcome in the article’s
treatment of hermeneutical theory. So their use of the
term
bias
and the even more explicitly negative term
prejudice
is confounding, and the specter of relativism
lurks behind their whole exposition.
Oversight of Perspectivism
Lonergan (1972, pp. 214-220) points out the impor-
tant difference between perspectivism and relativism.
Perspectives pertain to the unavoidable limitations and
individual differences that condition all human know-
ing. Since no two of us stand at exactly the same place
and time, our standpoints necessarily constrain our ex-
perience, our understanding, and our knowing. This set
of circumstances is hardly a liability. As two heads are
said to be better than one, so, too, multiple input from
various contributors on one and the same topic can lead
to an enriched and increasingly accurate understanding
of it. Perspectives afford valid “takes” on reality. They are
not biases or prejudices in the negative sense—skewed
report, preconception, disregard of facts—that Reber
and Slife (this issue) usually imply by
bias
. These theo-
rists’ oversight of the difference between enriching per-
spectives and distorting biases—and also thoroughgoing
relativism or postmodern agnosticism—again impugns
their core argument that would pit subjectivism against
objectivism and theism against naturalism.
The Subject as Authentic or Inauthentic
As an act of a subject, all knowing is subjective; but as
subjective, knowing can be accurate or inaccurate. The
limitations of perspectivism necessitate no inadequacy
in knowing, and Reber and Slife’s (this issue) link-
ing bias and prejudice to subjectivity is a red herring:
Multiply ambiguous, their argument distracts from
the real question about the accuracy of knowledge
claims. The telling formulation is not that of objectivity
versus subjectivity, but of authentic subjectivity versus
inauthentic subjectivity, of attentiveness, intelligence,
reasonableness, and responsibility versus the lack
thereof (Lonergan, 1972, pp. 20, 53, 55, 231, 302).
Then, quite simply, “Genuine objectivity is the fruit
of authentic subjectivity” (p. 292); or in a popular and
succinct example, it takes an honest person to arrive
at the truth. And the bugaboo of an undefined “dual-
ism” vanishes because the knowing, both subjective and
objective, pertains to the same knowledge and the same
knower and to neither without the other.
In their hermeneutical model, Reber and Slife (this
issue) ignore the issue of accuracy in knowing. To treat
it, they would need a thorough-going analysis of human
subjectivity or consciousness, which Lonergan seems to
have provided (Helminiak, in press; McCarthy, 1997;
Webb, 1988) and I have been intimating. Without
it, Reber and Slife and hermeneutical theory, as well,
can give no accounting of how differing “worldviews”
(which are not mere differing perspectives) constitute
“integral parts of meaningful wholes [sic]” or what
brings about those worldviews’ “relation to the [one]
whole” (p 11.2). Said otherwise, their overarching
canopy of meaning covers many worldviews, but it
includes no mechanism for adjudicating the correctness
and compatibility of those worldviews, so no integra-
tion could ever result. Candidates for that adjudica-
tive mechanism have been suggested: dialogue, whose
criteria would still need to be specified (e.g., Habermas,
1981), dialectic (Helminiak, 1998, pp. 172-180; Loner-
gan, 1972, ch. 10), or, unworkably, some overarching
religious “Truth” accepted a
priori
. But, while intimat-
ing the latter, Reber and Slife (this issue) name none of
them; rather, they deny the need for any adjudication.
So the dualism, the conflict of science and religion,
remains—concealed by a “hermeneutic view,” cov-
ered over in conceptually incompatible but univocally
named “meaningfulness.”
Stranded in the First Moment of Knowing: Understanding
without Judgment
I elaborate this crucial point through attention to this
summary statement of Reber and Slife’s (this issue):
“There is no subjectivism to fear in the alternative frame
of worldview relations we have described [i.e., their her-
meneutic view] because the dualism of subjectivity and
objectivity is not assumed in the first place” (p. 15.1).
Since hermeneutics refers to how experience is
interpreted and meaning generated, here subjectivity
clearly refers to the agency of a human subject. Most
peculiar, then, is dismissal of a difference between
subjectivity and objectivity. If subjectivity refers to the
knowing subject, objectivity must refer to what the
subject knows, to what is non-subject. In saying so, in
no way do I presume, as in the supposed “conventional
view,” that the known, the “object,” is material stuff ly-
ing out there, separate from the subject, confronting the
subject, available only to sensate observation. I speak of
human knowing, not animal perception. Human know-
ing knows being, not bodies (Lonergan, 1957/1992, pp.
275-27), and being is specified by verified meaning (pp.
372-398), not by this-against-that encounter.
At one moment in its process, yes, human knowing
does entail an identity of the knower and the known. In
the moment of insight, the subject-object distinction is
transcended. In one sense, it falls out. As the Scholastic
