High Calling Magazine

The official publication of The Francis Asbury Society

Postmodernism
BY REV. PAUL BLAIR
 

To understand Postmodernism, the focus of this issue of the High Calling, requires an understanding of how it differs from both the Pre-Modern and Modern Philosophies which preceded the contemporary dominance of Postmodernism in western culture. This article proposes to provide an overview of differences between the values accepted by each philosophy, especially as they affect personal and institutional faith in God with resulting changes in character and conduct.

Pre-Modern thought is a term used to differentiate between generally accepted values of western cultures before those of the Enlightenment Movement, broadly dated as the eighteenth century. Pre-Modern values included belief in God as a real Being who actually exists outside and beyond the mind of man and beyond the scope of this world.

While God is not part of the world in this context, He can penetrate it and interact with human beings as He wills. In this context, reason is reliable but not complete in itself. Revelation is necessary to disclose ultimate truth. Man has an intrinsic dignity and worth based on his having been created in the image of God, which image, however, had been subsequently corrupted into self-centeredness in the Fall. All creation is sacred and therefore gives meaning to life. There is an objective existence to the material world: It is not an imagination of the mind. The world has purpose and design.

In contrast, a modern understanding leaves no room for God or for the supernatural. Reason, rationalism, and the scientific method take over as the dominant interpretation of life. With the rise of the industrial revolution and technology came a growing confidence in man and in his ability to solve all problems. This confidence was quickly dashed, however, by the morass of the twentieth century with its two world wars led by many tyrannical rulers who slaughtered millions of their own and other people. In Modernity, the foundations of truth are science and rationalism. The center of Modernity is man.

In Postmodernism, by contrast, there are no real foundations of truth, for there is no truth, except what the group decides is truth. Postmodernism is preference, and truth is a social construct to be eliminated. Language is a text, as is the self, and both are to be deconstructed by emptying them of any real values in themselves. Truth and persons are given value only as the group values them. The group is sacred and assumes the role of the self. Where modernism was objective and gave rise to the will to reason, Postmodernism results in the will to power. Modernism produced the line, "I think, therefore I am"-Postmodernism produced the expression, "I feel, therefore I am and what I feel is good". Modernism characterized itself in "the death of God" statement-Postmodernism produces "the death of the self." Modernism made man the center and reference for all things-Postmodernism has no center: Human beings are like any other living objects; e.g., a tree or a whale. There is no difference in reality between a person or a plant or an animal. There is no difference in reality between any parts of creation.

Modernism puts man in control of nature-Postmodernism makes nature control man. In Modernism, the physical rules science-In Postmodernism, society's whims rule science. Modernism is concerned with man's achievements-Postmodernism is concerned with man's fashion, style, and preferences. Postmodernism is schizophrenic because one must construct not only one's own universe but also its interpretation. It is one's world and one's morality and one's reality. The rational is replaced by rhetoric. Words are replaced by images, reason by emotional gratification, morality by relativism, meaning by entertainment, truth by fiction. As Neitzsche said; "There are no facts only interpretations." Existentialism, (No God: what you get is what you make of things-no reality outside this world) became the philosophical basis for Postmodernism. Modernists, on the other hand, had said that truth is objective and can be known, whereas Postmodernism, ironically, constructs its own truth-ironically because Postmodernism is actually deconstructionism of all foundations and because there is no replacement, except what the group says is its truth.

The group is the new fundamentalism in which there is no basis for social reform, only power bids. There is no real individual. Each person is part of the group: No dialog, no story, only manipulation of language, and people as the objects of others, the commodification of all.

Politically, all are left with the drive towards totalitarianism as the savior from chaos. Modern versions of this bent toward totalitarianism have been Fascism, Marxism, and Nazism. All have failed to profit from precedent failed attempts to control. None can look at history because history is only a construct of the oppressor or of someone's opinions; so it has no real value or truth. Nothing is absolutely wrong, however, except to be out of step with what is politically correct by the prevailing group that is instantiated in the dominant momentary critique of society.

An appropriate depiction of Postmodernism is Edvard Munch's painting The Scream, which epitomizes horror, pain, incomprehensibility, and lostness; yet the scream is a call for help!

Necessity is laid upon those who believe in the Truth as revealed in scripture and in the Person and work of Jesus Christ, to see that there is a shift in thought occurring and to respond in an appropriate way- not by approaching the new era with a retrenchment into ultraconservatism nor into Christianity in a modernist wrapper. The response must be one of classical orthodoxy. There must be dialog in flesh that has veracity in personal integrity and not a mere dusting off of propositional truth. Gene Veith's question for understanding what is happening is in Ps. 11:3 (NIV), "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" He employs Solzhentsyn's remarks at Harvard as the answer. "Solzhentsyn, like the Postmodernists, believes that the modern era is over and that we are at the threshold of something new: If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the middle ages to the renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life. No one on earth has any way but upward." Solzhentsyn expressed the need for a spiritual blaze, but how will he know the difference between strange fire and Holy fire?

The scripture of I Chronicles 12:32(NIV), "... men of Issachar, who understood the times and knew what Israel should do..." underscores the demand for such help today. Only a fresh, faithful interpretation of the scriptures can provide a clear understanding of the world today. Paul understood and interpreted the gospel in the Greco-Roman first century world of politics, philosophy, and religion, dealt with the brutality of Rome, with Greek philosophy, and with the raw paganism of temple prostitution-a veritable smorgasbord of spirituality and religions from Diana of the Ephesians to Judaism. He also dealt with the fundamentalism of Pharisees, both those in Christ and those unconverted. He daily dealt with the problem of Gentiles' and Jews' becoming Christians and with what thinking and practices they needed to shed and with what they needed to keep; with Galatians' starting in Christ and moving to religion; and with Corinthians rife with self-interest that threatened to sabotage the work. More than once, well-meaning people beat him, and one group tried unsuccessfully to kill him.

The task has not changed! "Quo Vadis?" That question cannot be answered in Postmodernism except by "No where!" There is no optimism or hope-only lostness and despair. There is no standard for justice; there is no grammar for it! People want the benefits of God without God Himself! As Peter Berger says; "It is a do it yourself world without knowing how to develop a worldview that makes sense." Postmodernism is a reaction to modernity and its failure rather than coherent thinking for the future. It selects its own truth and worldview, but that has nothing to do with reality beyond itself! Postmodernism is inconsistent in that it claims itself to be the real picture of reality and truth. If this is truth, then Postmodernism cannot be true either, because it claims that there is no truth. It also provides no help for justice or value. There is, however, great insight into problems, but their remedy is the abyss.

Goethe said, "Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live." The scriptures reveal that people are unable to live the way they are supposed to live, "O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Jer.10:23 (KJV); Yet God has made us in such a way (Eccl.3:11) that the shattered image of his making corresponds when moved by His Grace. In Postmodernism, that groping is reminiscent of Acts17:27 that people are searching and trying everything to stuff their souls, but the emptiness is torturing and self-destructive. Even though the situation in much of the church and the world may be, "There was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in his own eyes," believers today must not despair. As Leslie Weatherhead said, "Evil is never the maker of things good but those circumstances are always an occasion for an expression of good". It is always "the best of times in the worst of times." That is the paradox of the cross! "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound", ROM. 5:20 (KJV). There is tremendous opportunity in these days!

Perspective on the times is gained by an article on Rhinehold Niebuhr in First Things Magazine (February 2002), "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history, therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint... for here one sees clearly how the transcendent makes the beauty of the world possible-how what is seen finds its surest grounding in what is unseen. That is precisely the beauty and poignancy of a consecrated life, for it is a life-long labor to make the visible conform to the invisible. Yet one also sees how easily such consecration can go astray, when what is unseen is not the unfathomable riches of God".

Helpful Reading:
For the Scholar - Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self: on Meaning, Manipulation and Promise-Anthony C. Thiselton, Eerdman's Publishing Company

For Pastors and Laity - Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture- Gene Edward Veith, Jr., Good News Publishing

Major PM writers - Derrida, Foucault, Locan, Lyotard, and Rorty ? Other writers: Schleiermacher, Heidegger, and Neitzsche


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