| The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate the exculpability of Carl Henry's epistemology from charges of modernist rationalism. This is attempted by setting Henry's rational epistemological methodology against the backdrop of earlier anti-metaphysical and heterodox metaphysical epistemologies, with a view to accentuating Henry's orthodox Christian metaphysical realism. Henry's commitment is to the reestablishment of divine revelation as the metaphysical axiom of epistemology.;Chapter 2 presents Henry's criticism of three anti-metaphysical systems—viz., Kantian Phenomenology, Barthian Neo-orthodoxy, and Ayerian Logical Positivism for attempting to establish epistemology on metaphysical vacuum, on the one hand, and Whiteheadian Process Thought for attempting to establish epistemology on heterodox metaphysics. Against his epistemological antagonists Henry reiterates theological and philosophical indispensability of metaphysics.;Chapter 3 presents Henry's project, highlighting its special features which ground his confidence in the function of his epistemology as a better substitute to the earlier ones. Henry's epistemology is presuppositional. It begins with an assumption of the reality of God and his self-disclosure as its basic axiom. Henry's epistemology is logo-centric. It is rational rather than rationalistic. It is metaphysics-affirming.;Chapter 4 presents a critical evaluation of Henry's epistemology. The chapter begins with a critique of the critics of Henry. It is argued that charges of Henry's rationalism, fundamentalism, anthropocentricism, and foundationalism, from within and without evangelicalism, are dismissible on the basis of their wrong premises. The rationale for Henry's emphasis on the objectivity of knowledge is divine bequeathing of humanity with such epistemic tools as logic and intelligible language, on the one hand, and God's self-disclosure by means of propositionally written Scripture, on the other hand.;Chapter 5 concludes that the basis of Henry's view of the intelligibility of divine revelation and the epistemic sufficiency of human reason and language (i.e., their suitability and sufficiency in appropriating divine revelation) is God's desire to clearly communicate his truth to mankind. Henry succeeds in preserving the integrity of the Bible as the objective metaphysical foundation of epistemology against the backdrop of the anti-metaphysical and heterodox metaphysical epistemologies. |
