Christians in the twenty-first century come out of a "brave, new world." That is nothing new, however - Christians have always faced new ideas. But there is a scary, new label in the world we face that has finally filtered down to the "news cast" level. That label is "postmodernism."

The terminology of postmodernism is now everywhere, so much so that one tires of hearing the word sometimes. The ideas of postmodernism have finally made it to church circles. A friend of mine who works at a Christian publishing company told me recently, only half in jest, that his editor "loves anything with ‘postmodern’ in it." What is this "postmodernism" that seems to be on everyone’s lips today?

Modernism

Building on the Renaissance, the Enlightenment brought a new way of thinking to the western world.  Or perhaps, as David Wells has argued, the Enlightenment ideas were accepted because the social conditions of the modern world were ready-made for enlightenment ideas.  In any case, this new way of thinking involved things we take for granted today.

One of the basic commitments of the Enlightenment was to reason. Pre-moderns sometimes (though not always, as some would contend) approached problems and questions in extra-reasonable ways. The Enlightenment demanded that superstition, magic, and other such approaches be abandoned in favor of reason.

Newton’s view of gravity initially ran into problems because it involved "action at a distance" without any physical connection to explain that action. This view was called by its opponents "occult" because they took it to be an appeal to something that smacked of "magic" rather than reason.

Think of some of the things believed by the generation most recently passed. My wife aunts used to verbally chastise their brother because he liked to drink iced tea, and it was "just a know fact" this would destroy the kidneys.  There is no evidence for this, no known connection or explanation - but people just accepted it without good reason. That is the sort of thing the Enlightenment sought to overcome.

The child of reason was science. Reasoning about the world became the goal of modern thought. The idea was that if you start with the right premises or information and reason correctly, you can arrive at truth - an accurate description of reality. Systematize this process and you have "science."

One of the goals of all this was objectivity. Science was not looking for "your truth" or "my truth" but truth that described the way things really are, and thus would apply equally to everyone. That’s why we all needed, according to modernism, to start with the correct premises, reason correctly, and thus arrive at objective truth - truth that would be the same for everyone, everywhere, for all time.

There came to be a "science" of almost everything. Even though this model fit some fields better than others, moderns hoped for everything to become a "science" because every field of study wanted to aim for objective truth.

Modernism and Christianity

Reason had always been implicit in the Christian faith. Scripture was understood and applied using reason. So the mere fact that modernism wanted to use reason was not considered a problem, in fact, the appeal to reason was welcomed by much of Christendom.

Christians of the modern era assumed that if we reasoned about things other than the Christian faith, the results should not conflict with the faith. So Christians typically took the "come, let us reason together" approach of Isaiah 1:18. Since the Christian faith seemed to include descriptions of reality - in some ways the most important parts of reality, such as the nature of God, the origin and purpose of the creation, and so forth - modernism’s emphasis on truth as a description of reality and the importance of reason were welcomed by most adherents of the Christian faith.

However, Enlightenment thought tended to move in the direction of seeing reason as excluding revelation (yielding deism), or excluding even the God Who creates (yielding atheism/agnosticism).   This debate began with deists, and then moved to agnostics and atheists. When Christian postmodernists are anxious to dump modernism in favor of postmodernism, this is often one of their main appeals - modernism excluded God and the supernatural. So, they say, we should welcome postmodernism because by dumping modernism, we dump all the anti-God baggage that came with it.

While modernism and Enlightenment thought employed reason as a key tool, and even claimed it as their exclusive domain, that claim is completely unfounded.  If one assumes that there could be no God, or nothing beyond the material world, then the Enlightenment version of reason comes into conflict with the Christian faith. But this is a misuse of reason, and such assumptions are themselves unreasonable.

An important selling point of modernism, especially in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, was the success of science and its offspring, technology. Because this aspect was so successful, and because this aspect focused on reasoning about the material world, there has been a renewed tendency (found in a few older thinkers also) to set reason at odds with the Christian faith.  Because some moderns wanted to exclude any kind of reasoning other than the "scientific method" and causes within the material world, this conflict intensified.

Postmodernism

Somewhere in the twentieth century, a reaction to modernism set in. Some say it began when WW I destroyed the optimism of the day. That reaction has been called - not very creatively it seems - "postmodernism."

Postmodernism is not a very well-defined school of thought. It is more of a cover-term for those who have tried to abandon or go beyond modernism. One should be very careful when using the term "postmodern" because it is used to mean so many things that it sometimes comes close to meaning nothing at all. However, there are some emphases that seem to have found a home under this umbrella term.

Some contend that postmodernism is more accurately seen as a kind of "hyper-modernism." What they mean by this is that many some of the later developments of modernism - especially things like cognitive and moral relativism - are key aspects of postmodern thought. In this sense, postmodernism is nothing new. There do seem to be at least some emphases in postmodernism that go beyond even the later developments of modernism.

Postmodern positions

Postmodern thought seems to have begun in literary circles, where some in the twentieth century began to contend that the meaning of literature comes not from the author, and not from the structure presumably placed into the literature by the author. Instead, it was said, the meaning of literature comes from the response of the reader. Modernists would analyze texts by trying to understand, in a systematic and scientific way, what the author intended and/or how the text was structured. Postmoderns reject this whole enterprise and insist that the "meaning" of literature must be found in the effect it has on the reader.

Postmodernists like to say that "words can refer only to words, not to things." When we speak with words, we are speaking only about words, never about some reality "out there." This lead to the postmodern rejection of what is called the "meta-narrative."

A meta-narrative is just a "big picture" view of things. Postmoderns typically claim that there can be no meta-narratives. While you can see things from your limited point of view, that’s as far as you can go. But in addition to this, most post-moderns think that meta-narratives tend to "oppress" people - that meta-narratives are a way of gaining "power" over others. The idea is that what (and perhaps "who") doesn’t fit with your "big picture" will be ignored or suppressed.

All this ties into the fact that some postmoderns posture as anti-reason.  They see reason as the toy of modern thinking, and hope to solve all sorts of problems by rejecting it.  Such "arguments" against reasoning make little sense since they necessarily involve reasoning, but that never seems to bother postmodernists.

Modernism was always looking for the most comprehensive theories possible in any field - the more that could be explained by a theory, the better. In fact, moderns, especially in the field of natural science, spent most of the twentieth century searching for the one theory that would tie together ALL fields of study. This is part of what postmoderns reject when they say there can be no "meta-narrative."

Postmoderns typically hold that the idea of "objective truth" makes no sense at all. Since there are no "big pictures" (meta-narratives), you have your perspective, I have mine, and that is the very best we can ever hope to do. Postmoderns tend to see truth as something shared by a community - and nothing more than that. We can never know if it is an accurate description of reality.

Postmodernists go further than saying that there are not "big pictures." They go on to claim that if you think you have a "big picture" you will inevitably "do violence" to someone - those who hold a different "big picture" than you. If you think it is a universal truth that we are "saved by faith" then you are implying that others are not "saved" and those without faith are excluded.

As much as I read this sort of thing, it always seems that the real complaint here is that if anyone were ever "right" about anything across-the-board, then that would mean that others are "wrong." In other words, postmodernists often seemed worried that someone could, in reality, be wrong! Don’t overlook this or underestimate it. Postmodernism is, in part, an approach where no one is ever really wrong - differences without incorrectness is one goal of postmodernism! If you watch our world carefully you will notice that this is an important motif - no one is every wrong about anything. We can all disagree and all be "right" in the postmodern world.

This leads some postmodernists to run with a version of pragmatism: if it "works" for us, then it is "true" for us. That is about the most "truth" can mean for most postmodernists.

So postmoderns are found of talking about "stories." You have a story, I have a story - we all have our own stories. There is no "higher" view from which to evaluate such "stories" - they must simply be told and accepted for what they are - my personal account of how I see things.

The whole attempt on the part of postmodernists to point out why we can’t have big pictures and objective truth (and a whole group of related ideas) is called "deconstruction." You can think of deconstruction as a postmodernist "taking apart" the modernist view of things - according to postmodernists, our pictures of reality are the constructions of our social group. Postmodernists, in pointing this out, are "de-constructing."

Post-modernizing the Christian Faith

Could the Christian faith make some kind of peace with postmodernism? Wouldn’t it be good for the faith to be rid of modernism anyway? These have been hot topics in the last few years in many Christian circles.

There are always two forces at work as the Christian faith encounters new ways of thinking. One of these is the tendency to add something to the Christian faith to make it more compatible with the new paradigm. The other is to remove something from the Christian faith to make it more compatible with the new paradigm.

There is always a danger here. If we just emphasize something already in the faith, there is no problem. If we just point out that some bit of "pop theology" that many thought was part of the faith is not really part of the faith, there is also no problem.

However, if we substantially alter the Christian faith to make it fit the most recent paradigm, then what we are working with is no longer the Christian faith. This has happened often in the history of Christianity. Classical Liberalism wanted to cut out miracles. Process Theology wanted to alter the basic conception of God. When we approach any "ism" with the Christian faith, these are important things to keep in mind.

What about modernism?

The emphasis on reason is not all bad, because without reason there is no Christian faith. It seems completely clear from scripture that believing and reasoning go hand-in-hand.

Reason is like a narcotic or a firearm: it can be used for good or ill. There is nothing about pointing out the necessity of reason in any undertaking that is at odds with the Christian faith. The problem with modernism and reason came when some modernists insisted that the Christian faith was unreasonable and should therefore be abandoned in the modernist project.

What about postmodernism?

If the reader-response idea (the meaning of a text comes only from the response of its readers) is carried into the Christian faith, the faith is cut off from its sources. If words refer only to words, the writers of the gospels and the letters of scripture cannot be telling us anything about God.

If there are no meta-narratives (big picture views) then there can be no Christian theology, which certainly presents one of the biggest pictures possible. God’s revelation, rightly understood, will present at least part of a "God’s eye" view of reality, since it is information from God. The idea that truth can only exist as shared by "communities" is a point that seems very attractive to some Christians who flirt with postmodernism. But the content of God’s revelation would be accurate whether shared among a community of human beings or not.

Postmodernism is really not a new way of thinking. It had been developing during much of the twentieth century. But postmodernism within the church is relatively new. If you want to see what you get when you attempt to mix postmodernism with Christianity, direct your attention to an essay by Philip D. Kenneson (professor of theology at Milligan College) "There’s No Such Thing As Objective Truth, and It’s a Good Thing, Too) in Christian Apologetics in the Postmodern World (IVP, 1995). While it is not the point here to review the essay in its entirety, it is worth noting some of the key points made by the author.

". . . truth claims are inseparably bound up with human language and are, therefore, inextricably linked to matters of discernment and judgment, which means they are irreducibly social or communal affairs." (p. 159)

". . . within this new paradigm beliefs are no longer mental states which may or may not correspond to reality; instead, beliefs and convictions are understood as habits of acting." (p. 163)

". . . we always know for certain what is true, because we are always in the grip of some belief." (p. 164)

". . . the position I am advocating suggest that sometimes one should avoid answering the . . . question ‘How do you know?’ and respond instead by asking" ‘Why do you talk that way?’" (p. 165)

"We know who Jesus is only on the basis of human witnesses to the history of God’s dealing with God’s people, which is mediated to us, not objectively, but through communities of human beings animated by the Holy Spirit." (p. 167)

What does it mean for the statement "Jesus is Lord" to be true? According to Kenneson, it means that the statement, "is consistent with the convictions and actions of Christians, but not with those of others." (p. 165)

What Kenneson seems to be after in all this is summed up when he says:

There is a good example of what you get when you attempt to postmodernize the Christian faith. Postmodernism has rejected the classical concepts of truth and objectivity. The response to this by some is to claim that Christianity can also do without truth and objectivity in their classical presentations.

Without attempting to critique this whole position, one has have to wonder what becomes of the idea of God’s revelation to human beings. Can God not see the "big picture" correctly, or is He somehow limited in this regard? If He can see it, is He for some reason unable to communicate any of it to us? What kind of God would this be?

Can human beings do no more than "tell their stories" or is it possible for human beings to speak the truth?

Is truth what it is because the church is what it is, or are there some things the church ought to be because of what the truth is? (Think very carefully about that.) Does the church invent what it ought to be, or does it receive what it ought to be from the perspective of someone who transcends our knowledge and our relationships?

There is constant talk today in church circles about "reaching the postmodern generation." Doing that will certainly require that we understand how postmoderns think. In attempting to reach any generation, however, there are always two possibilities. One is to call for people to have a change of mind about the word of God. The other is to distort God’s word in an attempt to make it compatible with the thinking of those we are trying to reach.

In the case of postmodernism, which course will the church take? This is a debate that is being waged within the church even now.  What will come of it is yet to be seen fully.