Millard Erickson gives an excellent introduction to the issue of understanding postmodernism in Christian Theology.
"Modernism, with its 'belief in the rationality of the universe,' has been the hallmark of the of the twentieth century. Today, however, there has been growing dissatisfaction with the modern view. The result has been the emergence of the postmodern movement, which is affecting every area of intellectual endeavor, including theology. It is important for Christians to understand postmodernism and to construct a theology to evidence awareness of and response to it. Some aspects of postmodernism are compatible with and supportive of biblical Christian theology, while other parts are antagonistic. Christian theology needs to support and use the former while rejecting the latter." (p. 158)
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Scripture and Culture
N.T. Wright has laid some interesting words to be considered... (by the way, I am just quoting because I do not claim to have any answers worth writing - yet)
"The continuing and much-discussed interplay between "modern" and "postmodern" culture has created a mood of uncertainty within Western society at least. There are three areas that can be easily identified." (Last Word, p. 6) NOTE, I will list only two of these points on this post...
"First, the big, older stories of who we are and what we're here for have been challenged and deconstructed. This is, in a sense, turning modernism's rhetoric on itself. Modernism (the movement which began with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment) made its way, through writers like Voltaire, by attacking the big, overarching story told by the church. Postmodernity has now done the same to all the great stories by which humans bring order to their lives ('meta-narratives'), not least the stories of 'progress' and 'enlightenment' which modernism itself made its stock-in-trade. The Bible... Like all metanarratives,... is instantly suspected of being told in order to advocate someone's interest. It is, people suspect, some kind of a power-play." (p. 7)
"Second, the notion of truth has been under scrutiny and indeed attack. Many today operate with two quite different types of 'truth.' If we asked, 'Is it true that Jesus died on a cross?' we normally would mean, 'did it really happen?' But if we asked, 'Is the parable of the Prodigal Son true?' we would quickly dismiss the idea that 'it really happened'; that is simply not the sort of thing parables are. We would insist that, in quite another sense, the parable is indeed 'true' in that we discover within the narrative a picture of God and his love, and of multiple layers of human folly, which rings true at all kinds of levels of human knowledge and experience."(p. 7)
"...Now postmodernity has pushed us in the other direction: toward supposing that all 'truth,' including the supposed 'facts' of scientific experiment, can be reduced to power-claims."(p. 8)
He then states a strategy he wishes to pursue:
"...I shall be arguing neither for a variety of modernism, nor for a return to premodernism, [see Sire] nor yet for a capitulation to postmodernism, but for what I hope is a way through this entire mess and muddle and forward into a way of living in and for God's world, and within the communtiy of God's people, with Christian and biblical integrity." (p. 10)
I really had no idea when I began this project that I would quote N. T. Wright so much.
"The continuing and much-discussed interplay between "modern" and "postmodern" culture has created a mood of uncertainty within Western society at least. There are three areas that can be easily identified." (Last Word, p. 6) NOTE, I will list only two of these points on this post...
"First, the big, older stories of who we are and what we're here for have been challenged and deconstructed. This is, in a sense, turning modernism's rhetoric on itself. Modernism (the movement which began with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment) made its way, through writers like Voltaire, by attacking the big, overarching story told by the church. Postmodernity has now done the same to all the great stories by which humans bring order to their lives ('meta-narratives'), not least the stories of 'progress' and 'enlightenment' which modernism itself made its stock-in-trade. The Bible... Like all metanarratives,... is instantly suspected of being told in order to advocate someone's interest. It is, people suspect, some kind of a power-play." (p. 7)
"Second, the notion of truth has been under scrutiny and indeed attack. Many today operate with two quite different types of 'truth.' If we asked, 'Is it true that Jesus died on a cross?' we normally would mean, 'did it really happen?' But if we asked, 'Is the parable of the Prodigal Son true?' we would quickly dismiss the idea that 'it really happened'; that is simply not the sort of thing parables are. We would insist that, in quite another sense, the parable is indeed 'true' in that we discover within the narrative a picture of God and his love, and of multiple layers of human folly, which rings true at all kinds of levels of human knowledge and experience."(p. 7)
"...Now postmodernity has pushed us in the other direction: toward supposing that all 'truth,' including the supposed 'facts' of scientific experiment, can be reduced to power-claims."(p. 8)
He then states a strategy he wishes to pursue:
"...I shall be arguing neither for a variety of modernism, nor for a return to premodernism, [see Sire] nor yet for a capitulation to postmodernism, but for what I hope is a way through this entire mess and muddle and forward into a way of living in and for God's world, and within the communtiy of God's people, with Christian and biblical integrity." (p. 10)
I really had no idea when I began this project that I would quote N. T. Wright so much.
Monday, October 30, 2006
the self: another shift
"Sartre said, 'Existence precedes essence.' We make ourselves by what we choose to do. "
"For Nietzsche the only self worth living was the self of the ...Overman, the one who has risen above the conventional herd and has fashioned himself."
a shift:
Sire - p. 181-2
"For Nietzsche the only self worth living was the self of the ...Overman, the one who has risen above the conventional herd and has fashioned himself."
a shift:
"premodern" theistic notion that human beings are dignified
by being created in the image of God
to
"modern" notion that human beings are the product of their DNA template, which itself is the result of unplanned evolution based on change mutations and the survival of the fittest
to
"postmodern" notion of an insubstantial self constructed by the language it uses
to describe itself
Sire - p. 181-2
a pattern of shift in ethics
"premodern" theistic ethics based on the character of a transcendent God who is good and has revealed that goodness
to
"modern" ethics based on a notion of universal human reason and experience and the human ability to discern objective right from wrong
to
"postmodern" notion that morality is the multiplicity of languages used to describe right from wrong
Sire summarizes that "Postmodernism can make no normative judgement about such a view. It can only observe and comment: so much the worse for those who find themselves oppressed by the majority."
Sire: Universe, p. 183
knowledge
Sire quotes francis bacon: "Knowledge is power,"
Sire contrasts postmodern thought:
"With postmodernism, however, the situation is reversed. There is no purely objective knowledge, no truth of correspondence. Instead, there are only stories, stories which, when they are believed, give the storyteller power over overs."
hmmmmmm
then: Sire then tells us that Michel Foucault emphazises this relationship: "Any story but one's own is oppressive."
and: Sire states... "To reject oppression is to reject all the stories society tells us. This is, of course, anarchy, and this,... Foucault accepts"
lastly, Sire simplifies with a pattern of philosophical movement:
(Universe p. 181)
Sire contrasts postmodern thought:
"With postmodernism, however, the situation is reversed. There is no purely objective knowledge, no truth of correspondence. Instead, there are only stories, stories which, when they are believed, give the storyteller power over overs."
hmmmmmm
then: Sire then tells us that Michel Foucault emphazises this relationship: "Any story but one's own is oppressive."
and: Sire states... "To reject oppression is to reject all the stories society tells us. This is, of course, anarchy, and this,... Foucault accepts"
lastly, Sire simplifies with a pattern of philosophical movement:
a "premodern" acceptance of a metanarrative written by God and revealed in Scripture
to
a "modern" metanarrative of universal reason yielding truth about reality
to
a "postmodern" reduction of all metanarratives to power plays
(Universe p. 181)
truth?
it seems that one of the names coming up in my reading is Nietzche... James Sire provides this by Nietzsche on "truth"...
"What then is truth? a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms - in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transported, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
Neitzsche was to some, a father of postmodern thought...
cited from "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, " in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, pp. 95-96 in Universe - Sire
"What then is truth? a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms - in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transported, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins."
Neitzsche was to some, a father of postmodern thought...
cited from "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, " in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann, pp. 95-96 in Universe - Sire
experience and the Bible
N. T. Wright invests some thoughts about postmodernity in his book about the authority of Scripture... here are a couple of quotes that I am thinking about...
on experience as authority
"... though this has never been accepted within official formulations, many church leaders now speak of "scripture, tradition, reason and experience" as though the well-known three-legged stool had now been upgraded by the addition of another leg of the same type as the other three." (Last, p.100)
then...
"Adding a fourth leg to a three-legged stool often makes it unstable." (p. 101)
then...
"Indeed, the stress on "experience" has contributed materially to that form of pluralism, verging on anarchy, which we now see across the Western world." (p.102)
then after all that, he offers a different approach...
"We could put it like this. "Experience" is what grows by itself in the garden. "Authority" is what happens when the gardener wants to affirm the goodness of the genuine flowers and vegetables by uprooting the weeds in order to let beauty and fruitfulness triumph over chaos, thorns and thistles. An over-authoritarian church, paying no attention to experience, solves the problem by paving the garden with concrete. An over-experiential church solves the problem of concrete by letting anything and everything grow unchecked, sometimes labeling concrete as "law" and so celebrating any and every weed as "grace." (p. 104)
finally, I add this quote...
"When, through letting scripture be the vechile of God's judging and healing authority in our communities and individual lives, we really do "experience" God's affirmation, then we shall know as we are known" (p. 105)
quotes from The Last Word
on experience as authority
"... though this has never been accepted within official formulations, many church leaders now speak of "scripture, tradition, reason and experience" as though the well-known three-legged stool had now been upgraded by the addition of another leg of the same type as the other three." (Last, p.100)
then...
"Adding a fourth leg to a three-legged stool often makes it unstable." (p. 101)
then...
"Indeed, the stress on "experience" has contributed materially to that form of pluralism, verging on anarchy, which we now see across the Western world." (p.102)
then after all that, he offers a different approach...
"We could put it like this. "Experience" is what grows by itself in the garden. "Authority" is what happens when the gardener wants to affirm the goodness of the genuine flowers and vegetables by uprooting the weeds in order to let beauty and fruitfulness triumph over chaos, thorns and thistles. An over-authoritarian church, paying no attention to experience, solves the problem by paving the garden with concrete. An over-experiential church solves the problem of concrete by letting anything and everything grow unchecked, sometimes labeling concrete as "law" and so celebrating any and every weed as "grace." (p. 104)
finally, I add this quote...
"When, through letting scripture be the vechile of God's judging and healing authority in our communities and individual lives, we really do "experience" God's affirmation, then we shall know as we are known" (p. 105)
quotes from The Last Word
resources I've used so far
Here are some resources that I am using to try to learn about this topic:
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (details forthcoming)
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (details forthcoming)
While standing in the philosophy section of Barnes and Noble, I was looking through these volumes. I bought these to update my library and found myself following the "links"and reading scores of articles about the terms, times and people of postmodernism, my journey began in earnest. And while I like to visit Cambridge more that Oxford each spring, I like the Oxford dictionary better.
"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (on line)
When you print this article on postmodernism, it is fifteen pages long, so don't kill too many trees (did I really just write that?) I have not, to be honest read the article word for word. But in scanning it I saw many of the same points, yet in more detail than in my earlier reading, as the dictionaries. The click to the article pays of with the first sentence.
"Postmodernity and Theology" in Christian Theology by Millard Erikson, Baker, 2nd Ed. 1997
This is the second edition of the text I used (1st ed.) in seminary and have used over and again. When Laci asked me to get it for him last year, I noticed the new chapter on postmodernity. I recently read this chapter and found it helpful as Erickson gives a thorough but concise survey of modernism which is really essential to understand that which postmodernism is against, anti, after...
"The Vanished Horizion" in The Universe Next Door by James Sire, IVP, 1997
After having read several pieces, I was ready for this. Sire is thick and puts a lot on a page. But he presents the material in such a way that one can see the progression from what was to what is now. Some of his arguments at the end of the chapter seem a bit pat, but... they seem to work too... very helpful to me in synthesizing much of the material I had already read.
The Last Word by N. T. Wright, HarperSanFrancisco 2005
Since authority and knowledge and truth are such important topics in this realm of inquiry, I suggest the follower of Christ read this book. Wright gives an interesting perspective on the authority of Scripture and how it must be understood in context of both the time it was written and the time it is read.
Paul by N. T. Wright, Fortress Press, Mineapolis, 2005
Apparantly to some, this is a controversial volume, but I've thought it helpful, there is just a little within that is applicable to this conversation in "Jesus, paul and the Task of the Church" where Wright draws us a picture of how the church should act and work in the face of the changing culture?
Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (details forthcoming)
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (details forthcoming)
While standing in the philosophy section of Barnes and Noble, I was looking through these volumes. I bought these to update my library and found myself following the "links"and reading scores of articles about the terms, times and people of postmodernism, my journey began in earnest. And while I like to visit Cambridge more that Oxford each spring, I like the Oxford dictionary better.
"Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (on line)
When you print this article on postmodernism, it is fifteen pages long, so don't kill too many trees (did I really just write that?) I have not, to be honest read the article word for word. But in scanning it I saw many of the same points, yet in more detail than in my earlier reading, as the dictionaries. The click to the article pays of with the first sentence.
"Postmodernity and Theology" in Christian Theology by Millard Erikson, Baker, 2nd Ed. 1997
This is the second edition of the text I used (1st ed.) in seminary and have used over and again. When Laci asked me to get it for him last year, I noticed the new chapter on postmodernity. I recently read this chapter and found it helpful as Erickson gives a thorough but concise survey of modernism which is really essential to understand that which postmodernism is against, anti, after...
"The Vanished Horizion" in The Universe Next Door by James Sire, IVP, 1997
After having read several pieces, I was ready for this. Sire is thick and puts a lot on a page. But he presents the material in such a way that one can see the progression from what was to what is now. Some of his arguments at the end of the chapter seem a bit pat, but... they seem to work too... very helpful to me in synthesizing much of the material I had already read.
The Last Word by N. T. Wright, HarperSanFrancisco 2005
Since authority and knowledge and truth are such important topics in this realm of inquiry, I suggest the follower of Christ read this book. Wright gives an interesting perspective on the authority of Scripture and how it must be understood in context of both the time it was written and the time it is read.
Paul by N. T. Wright, Fortress Press, Mineapolis, 2005
Apparantly to some, this is a controversial volume, but I've thought it helpful, there is just a little within that is applicable to this conversation in "Jesus, paul and the Task of the Church" where Wright draws us a picture of how the church should act and work in the face of the changing culture?
Saturday, October 28, 2006
why this blog?
well, my work is with post moderns... several, maybe most of my colleagues are too... so a dialogue between texts and people who are post modern may prove helpful to an old modernist like me
serving post moderns is launched
this blog will be a conversation about serving post moderns... it will investigate post modernity and those who think according to it to the end that they may be understood better and therefor, served with the gospel
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