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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Post-modern Metanarratives
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
On a post-modern tangent on the "Does Jesus want churches?" thread, Fr Gregory asked:
quote:
Originally posted by Fr. Gregory:
Are there many gospels since there is no one universal meta-narrative?
Which I guess begs the question about whether the Post-Modern Position™ is that there is no one universal meta-narrative. Personally I think there is absolute truth and thus there is a meta-narrative out there that must be the one true one...
...however, I am not sure that anyone down here can possess such a perfect truth.
Do I think the Christian meta-narrative is truer than the alternatives? Yep, but I also accept that this is very much:
#1 on the back of my culture and upbringing
#2 a matter of faith, based on my experiences
Am I then right to claim that my meta-narrative is any more truer than my neighbour's?
But, to return to the original question. Are there many gospels because there are many meta-narratives? My answer would be no. The world needs the saving grace of Jesus -- in my eyes it is the solution the world needs.
I long for the day that my friends would share my worldview - but I do think there is a more honest way of that happening than me claiming truth when I don't explicitly know it to be truth and with me helping to guide my friends to truth rather than insist I'm right and they are wrong.
Let the systematic distruction of post-modern thought begin! ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
AB
[ 01. February 2004, 17:35: Message edited by: Alan Cresswell ]
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear AB
Gong! I'm sorry but you're not a postmodernist. Your'e a non-judgemental Christian. There is a difference.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
Well, I'm not sure that the post-modern club is strictly defined, but to be fair, it's all just labels anyway. Not every post-modernist thinker aschews all absolute truth and sees all truths as equally valid (Polanyi)
That said, moving from modernity (we can understand, we possess truth) to post-modernity (we can't necessarily understand, we don't necessarily possess truth) is a journey I have made, and so find the term post-modern to be helpful).
I would also agree with you that being post-modern and non-judgemental are different: one may be a concious decision to be tolerant inspite of an explicit difference in truth claims (non-judgmental), whilst the other asserts that there is some validity in alternative approaches and that one does not necessarily possess a truth any 'truer' (if that makes sense). I'm most certainly in the latter.
Thus my approach to the gospel would be much more presenting and sharing my worldview with someone, rather than explicitly telling them that there is truth, I possess it, the truth they think they have is wrong and that they must convert.
A much deeper issue would be, do we need to convince someone of absolute (and knowable) truth to be able to convince someone of the gospel of Jesus...
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
quote:
A much deeper issue would be, do we need to convince someone of absolute (and knowable) truth to be able to convince someone of the gospel of Jesus...
No, they simply have to be loved.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Indeed
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Ophelia's Opera Therapist
Shipmate
# 4081
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Posted
I agree that loving someone is far more important than convincing them of the truth of a meta-narrative.
I'm not sure about someone having their own meta-narrative. I'd rather say that society and the powers that be have dictated meta-narratives over the years which a more post-modern attitude is now rejecting. We don't just believe the history books any more. We question what the media are telling us and we look for the truth behind the news stories. And people are rejecting religion that they might have believed 'because the church or the state told them to', and looking for something that seems 'real to them'.
The fact that there are four gospels actually works with post-modern ideas in a way, because they are presented a four different people's takes on the events in the life of Jesus and are actually more convincing as historical documents for the different emphases and slight differences. It's not like 'The Church' is saying - 'this is the truth you must believe it', instead different people's accounts have been recorded and preserved. Not that 'The Church' hasn't tried that line, historically, but the mix of stories and histories that make up church tradition allow a multiplicity of approaches to Christianity, as this site shows.
I said on some other thread that effective evangelism involves sharing your story about how your faith is important to you. If you are excited about it that will make it interesting and attractive. But there needs to be some respect for other people's stories too.
OOT
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Though the bleak sky is burdened I'll pray anyway,
And though irony's drained me I'll now try sincere,
And whoever it was that brought me here
Will have to take me home. Martyn Joseph
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Forgive me but I didn't think that postmodernism was simply a matter of questioning authority and non-conformity. If that is the case then I am certainly postmodern. I don't believe because someone or something tells me to and I certainly treat much of what goes for news reporting as social manipulation. No, I thought postmodernism was saying that there is no story we can all believe ... in other words, ONE that is universally believable; not that one MUST believe it but that believing it is a credible position.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
(apologies for the long post, but I thought it'd be good to try and explain post-modernism a bit!)
Postmodernism is a slippery fish to describe. In it's essence it is a reaction against modernism and it has it roots in the existentialism of the early 20th century (Satre, Nietzsche)
A good way to understand it is to consider the changes from the 'medieval' worldview (roughly~ circa 700 - 1400) to the 'modern' worldview (roughly~ circa 1600-1950). Several things drove the change (which probably happened over a few hundred years):
#1 the feudal system of goverment with divinely appointed monarchs was challenged with revolution after revolution, as corrupt rulers were exposed and the masses rebelled.
#2 the printing press gave everyone access to literature and important scientific journals. Truth was no longer a sole possession of the institution, but now of the individual.
#3 as understanding in science and theology grew, the birth of rationalism with the prospect of understanding everything was birthed by the enlightenment. Truth could be reasoned and understood by all.
#4 The industrial revolution created a culture which needed to be localised and synchronised to be affected. Thus cities grew and public 'services' grew up to support it.
#5 The reformation and counter-reformation put truth on the agenda in Christianity. Each side possessed the Truth, which they 'knew' to be True. One must be right, and it was they.
Thus we ended up with modernism, with it's individualistic, rationalistic philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Kant etc.), it's literate communication and it's localised and syncronised culture.
However, the last 50 years has heralded many changes in such a short space of time that the recent generations are facing a massive change to their worldviews. The change from mediavalism to modernity happened over centuries - post modernism is happening in about 50. The changes accelerating these things cover the same points above:
#1 Globalisation is replacing the old order of political empires, colonies and mono-cultural rule - were are becoming fragmented, plurarlistic and market driven.
#2 Communication is changing, we are mobile, we are 'connected' via the internet. Communication is now interactive rather than static. With a multitude of truth claims available, truth is now found within the community rather than the individual.
#3 developments in science and philosophy have led us away from rationalism. Quantum mechanics mean truth we previously took for granted (Newton's laws, for example) no longer hold true. More and more scientists are asking why, rather than how - an answer science can't provide.
#4 As communication changes, we are becoming a post-industrial culture. No longer do we need to be localised to work effectively. A global market means synchronisation is also no-longer a priority - shifts, telecommunication, service industries are changing the way culture reacts to the workforce. Hence 24 hour supermarkets, automated banking and internet shopping.
#5 As pluralism becomes king in our culture Truth is once again in the spotlight with religion. With faith viewed as a choice, faith needs to have virtue and authenticity rather than a better propositional foundation. With an underlying cultural of modernity imbedded into Christianity now, propostionalism is still seen as key to authentic belief, causing a philosophical clash.
Thus, our culture is spiralling into an alternative world-view. Not better, not worse, just different. And because it is happening so fast, the change between a few generations is noticeable. Thus the young struggle to understand the old, and the old the young, thus the spiral becomes bigger as both cultures retreat into the safety of their own worldviews.
But, post-modernism is here to stay, and it is just as much an intruder to Christianity as modernism was to the medieval Christianity.
The last one heralded a reformation. Will this one do the same? We'll have to wait and see.
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear AB
I am aware of that historical background and all too acutely in the context of a post-Catholic, post-Protestant, but not post-Orthodox western culture.
I still don't know whether you have shown or refuted my claim that postmodernism denies the possibility of one knowable universal metanarrative. If it doesn't, then it cannot accommodate the gospel.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
Dear Fr Gregory,
Post-modernism doesn't have a set outlook on absolute truth. There are thinkers within the post-modern framework who would follow a more Neitzschian philosophy into nihilism and deny all absolute truth.
Others such as Polanyi, Foucault, etc. do not follow that through, but instead set up a framework for doubt and criticism.
True nihilism will reject any truth claim, postmodernism will try to deconstruct the claim of any controlling factors.
Therefore I would say that nihilism is likely to reject a propositional gospel, yes. But post-modernism not necessarily so.
[digression]Some would argue that it is impossible to live a truly nihilistic life, so the arguement is rather too hypothetical to be of practical use[/digression]
Hope that helps,
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Isaac David
Accidental Awkwardox
# 4671
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Posted
Dear AB, Fr Gregory
Perhaps I can intervene here... ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Have you read Truth Decay by Douglas Groothuis? It deconstructs postmodernism quite nicely - although from an evangelical Protestant point of view (it is published by IVP, afetr all), but there isn't a great deal to object to from TheOrthodoxPosition™
Isaac David
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Isaac the Idiot
Forget philosophy. Read Borges.
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Father Gregory
Orthodoxy
# 310
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Posted
Dear Isaac David
I am only going onm hearsay and quotable quotes to be honest. I haven't gone into postmodernism in any depth so I need to attend to that.
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Yours in Christ
Fr. Gregory
Find Your Way Around the Plot
TheOrthodoxPlot™
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Timothy the Obscure
Mostly Friendly
# 292
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Posted
I'd suggest that a minimalist definition of postmodernism is that it asserts that everything that is apprehended is apprehended from some perspective and conditioned by that (historical, cultural, psychological) perspective. Therefore the modernist quest for the "objective" view--the perspective so transcendent that it ceases to be a perspective at all but is simply the direct apprehension of "Truth"--is futile, and the attempt to assert such an absolute perspective is an exercise of power rather than anything else.
That absolute perspective is sometimes called (generally by non-theistic postmodernists) the "God's-Eye View." Which raises interesting questions from a theistic perspective.
Timothy
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When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.
- C. P. Snow
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
Dear Isaac David,
As a postmodern, I'm naturally sceptical of things written 'with an agenda' ![[Smile]](smile.gif) But I will try and hunt it out.
There is a lot of resistance to postmodernism within evangelical circles because of the highly modernistic approach of many strands of evo faith, which renders it incompatible with postmodern thought.
Whether that need be the case is another discussion, though perhaps an interesting direction for this conversation?
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Charles Lemert offers a very interesting threefold classification of post-modern and postmodern thought in his book Postmodernism is Not What You Think which is briefly covered here. Lemert's book is very accessible, and possesses a certain extra interest inasmuch as Lemert is ordained - as an Episcopalian if I remember rightly. He's very sensible and humane.
Another somewhat different classification of postmodernisms is offered by Pauline Rosenau - it's briefly covered here where there's a lot of other stuff on PoMo. Her book is called Post-modernism and the Social Sciences. She divides postmodern approaches into affirmatives and skeptics: skeptics quote:
argue that the post-modern age is one of fragmentation, disintegration, malaise, meaninglessness, a vagueness or even absence of moral parameters and societal chaos… In this period no social or political 'project' is worthy of commitment.
(Rosenau, p. 15) quote:
The "affirmatives" are a still more nebulous category. More indigenous to Anglo-North American culture than to the Continent, the generally optimistic affirmatives are oriented toward process. They are either open to positive political action, struggle and resistance) or content with the recognition of visionary, celebratory personal nondogmatic projects that range from New Age religion to New Wave life-styles and include a whole spectrum of post-modern social movements. (Rosenau, pp. 15-16*)
There's a fair old difference, eh no?
And there's always the point to be made that post-modernity, if not postmodernity, is where we are whether we like it or not. Maybe we should be clear that some of us are approaching our Christianity from a postmodern direction and others vice-versa.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Orb
Eye eye Cap'n!
# 3256
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Posted
There's also a difference between 'postmodernism' and 'postmodernity'. The former is the worldview and the latter is the cultural expression of those values the worldview brings.
I think the reason evangelical Christianity is so hostile to postmodernism is because: a) most people can't be bothered to understand it, b) individuals believe and fear that seeing it as helpful (there is defnitely an open-ness to religion within postmodernity, if not postmodernism) would negate their own position and c) they fear that it might actually be a lot more helpful to care about people from a human, subjective stance rather than an objective, "THIS IS THE TRUTH AND I WON'T BUDGE!" standpoint.
I personally think there are definitely elements of postmodernism that Christians should reject, but much of what it says about freedom and choice (and some other parts) should be affirmed by influential Christians, particularly evangelicals...
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“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
I think the hostility to postmodernism is largely to do with notion that within postmodernism absolute truth is no-longer valid. If an evo faith is founded on the concept of absolute truth that many need to realise before they are 'saved' - and indeed, an absolute moral code to be followed, than anything that attacks this assumption is thus attacking their faith.
I know this, because I've had to sit through a few sermons attacking post-modern thought by people who haven't read more than the back of a cereal packet about what postmodernism is. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
But hey, more and more people are realising that this isn't going to go away, and my church, in particular is starting to investigate methods of evangelism towards postmoderns. Mind you, they are coming from the point of view of us (moderns) reaching out to them (postmoderns) - which I feel is rather neglecting the postmoderns within the church already. But whacanyado?
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
AB: quote:
Mind you, they are coming from the point of view of us (moderns) reaching out to them (postmoderns) - which I feel is rather neglecting the postmoderns within the church already.
Worse than that, it's a stance which would (will?) doom their church to death in 7 years. I agree with you completely. The postmodern is a wave. You can build defences and watch as the tsunami pulverizes them - or you can ride up and surf.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Orb
Eye eye Cap'n!
# 3256
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Posted
What does a postmodern Christmas look like then?
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“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
psyduck,
quote:
Worse than that, it's a stance which would (will?) doom their church to death in 7 years.
I agree entirely, but I simply don't know what to do about it. Their whole faith structure is woven deep with modernity and they can't see it for the imposter it is. For them, faith and practise has to be justified rationally and they are therefore unable to be flexible in areas that many post-moderns might need (be them in the church or out). To them it is softening the gospel for the sake of culture, and thus something to be faught against.
Factories like UCCF and the Evo Proc trust are churning out a bunch of new leaders embroiled in modernism too, so it's unlikely that postmodern leaders will break through any time soon - so must we break out, or pray for a change from within? Hmmmmmm
Singleton,
Check out "A New Kind of Christian" by Brian D. McLaren for a good exploration into post-modern christianity (and explained in quite a novel way!).
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Singleton: quote:
What does a postmodern Christmas look like then?
This one!
AB: quote:
I agree entirely, but I simply don't know what to do about it. Their whole faith structure is woven deep with modernity and they can't see it for the imposter it is. For them, faith and practise has to be justified rationally and they are therefore unable to be flexible in areas that many post-moderns might need (be them in the church or out). To them it is softening the gospel for the sake of culture, and thus something to be faught against.
Sounds just like the dear old C of S!!! My own position is that, if you like, metanarrative and trust are diametrically opposed. Metanarratives are the stories we tell to convince ourselves that we possess the truth. If we believe that faith is accepting a particular metanarrative - if we model our Christian faith on the kind of faith that scientistic, positivistic people have in science - then we're in deep trouble because the only way to maintain that sort of faith now is to be in deep denial about the relationship between that faith and what life's like. Oddly enough, though, it seems to me that faith-as-trust is more available to people in the last ten years tan it has been for several centuries (even though devout people have never stopped believing this way). I think that trust involves riding the wave while believing that God is bigger than the wave. Much bigger. But that it's this particular wave that we have to cope with at the moment. Local and global, man! Way to go! ![[Cool]](cool.gif)
And don't worry about the 'leadership', and their power-neuroses. Jesus didn't.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
I believe that it was Lyotard who defined postmodernism as 'incredulity towards metanarratives.'
But it seems to me that the appropriate response to metanarratives is not incredulity but critical understanding.
Glenn
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This entire doctrine is worthless except as a subject of dispute. (G. C. Lichtenberg 1742-1799 Aphorism 60 in notebook J of The Waste Books)
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
A good Ricoeurian answer.
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
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The Undiscovered Country
Shipmate
# 4811
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AB:
psyduck,
quote:
Worse than that, it's a stance which would (will?) doom their church to death in 7 years.
I agree entirely, but I simply don't know what to do about it. Their whole faith structure is woven deep with modernity and they can't see it for the imposter it is. For them, faith and practise has to be justified rationally and they are therefore unable to be flexible in areas that many post-moderns might need (be them in the church or out). AB
What exactly do you mean by that? Can you give some examples?
Christianity shares with post-modernism the fact that being a Christian has to be more than abstract knowledge. It has to be by a relationship with God. Christianity also cannot be imposed-no one at the end of the day can make anyone beleive something they don't really believe. However where Christianity and postmodernism part company is in the concept of truth. God and all the truths about Him and the way He made the world and mankind to operate are true even if no one believed them.
Whilst it is clearly preferably from any person's perspective to be doing something because we understand the reasoning for it, there are times in our Christian walk where we don't understand something but we still need to obey God i.e. if someone has wronged me or hurt me in a major way, the last thing I may feel like doing is forgiving that person but I, calling upon God for his mercy and power, still need to choose to do so. The fact that I feel hurt and do not feel like forgiving does not make it legitimate not to forgive. There is a commonality with postmodernism in that forgiveness is a choice. However the difference from postmodernism is that to choose not to forgive is not right or 'true'. If I cannot forgive, the response should not be to legitimise my own actions by saying 'I am being true to myself, therefore it is OK not to forgive'. The response needs to be to call upon God for forgiveness for my own hardness of heart and for His strength to make the right choice.
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. Therefore all hope of progress rests with the unreasonable man.
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Not disagreeing with Amos about the quality or affinities of your post, Glenn Oldham, but it's worth making the point, perhaps, that the (undeniably - and quintessentially! - postmodernist) book in which Lyotard says this is called "The Postmodern Condition." My understanding of what he's saying is that for our contemporaries, metanarratives have become incredible - and everything changes accordingly. That's the light in which I read the OP. In a sense, postmodernism aside, postmodernity is where we all are, and I agree very much with AB that some traditions are flogging dead metanarratives with zeal. I also think that they are encouraged in this because they confuse the undoubted success they have in drawing people in with what they assume is their success in getting across their own metanarrative Christianity.
An interesting little diagnostic of this - I've had very close acquaintance, in a pastoral capacity, with five places in which Alpha has been run. In all five, people hae thoroughly enjoyed Alpha to the extent that - dig this - they've wanted to do it again! I don't think that's because they want to beef up on the metanarrative! I think it's because of the sense of warmth, belonging and excitement that Alpha generatied for them. I'd say that a good half of each group were among the most whimsically, engagingly and hair-raisingly unorthodox and 'new-agey' Christians I meet! None of them understands Alpha to be promulgating an orthodoxy that they need to be able to conform to. And I'd say that they're fairly representative. Incredulity towards metanarratives isn't just down to a (non-)Ricoeurian 'hermeneutics of suspicion'. It's just where people are. Its an "Oooh! Shiny!" hermeneutics. Bless them! Even the most innately intelligent people are susceptible to this nowadays. And one of the distressing things is the way in which metanarrative-steeped Christianity hates and despises them for it. Because - of course - it feels (and is) deeply threatened by all this. How do we expect to get anywhere with people, though, if we can't love them as they are?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Jeff Featherstone: quote:
However where Christianity and postmodernism part company is in the concept of truth. God and all the truths about Him and the way He made the world and mankind to operate are true even if no one believed them.
That's a thoroughly Enlightenment-modern view of the truth of Christianity! Karl Jaspers put the question - was Galileo justified in recanting before the Inquisition? And his answer was - yes. What he'd seen through his telescope - phases of Venus (so it went round the sun, not the earth) and Jupiter's satellites (a potential model of the earth going round the sun) were independently verifiable truths, which any astronomer could encounter again by repeating the procedure. According to Jaspers, Galileo would have been mad to have dies for a scientific truth. Any tyrant who dooms you to death for asserting that water boils at 100 degrees c at sea level has no purchase on scientific truth, and you can safely wait for his insanty to pass away, knowing that future scientists will always be able to re-establish scientific truth. (Actually, I think water boiling at 100 degrees etc. is probably a tautology, but you know what I mean...) Whereas when Polycarp of Smyrna was martyred for the Christian faith in 155AD, he was dying for a truth of a different order, one that is bound up with our human living in such a way that - like harbouring Jews from the SS - it has to be known, believed, lived and died at each point in history. The idea that the Gospel could be just as true if no-one believed it is frankly potty. Even if you reduce its scope to "God and all the truths about Him and the way He made the world and mankind to operate..." you need something like Paul's idea of the law written in the hearts of Gentiles, so that they are 'a law unto themselves' - otherwise there's nothing to make mankind operate in the way God made them to operate - if you see what I mean. I think there's real confusion between "Belief in" and "Belief that" in this way of looking at things.
(I think, for the same reason, that it's a part of the internal logic of the Christian faith, that the Church cannot contemplate her own historic end before the parousia - otherwise Christianity in the present falls apart. Memory is a complex theme in postmodernism! But that's another thread - and maybe it's Fr/ G's thread on amnesia and ... er... stuff... er... I forget...)
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
Thanks for your illuminating posts Psyduck. I need all the help I can get with understanding postmodernism and postmodernity. About once a year I read a book on it and think that I have learned a bit, but then it all slips away.
Part of my annoyance is that I feel that it tends to be assumed these days that you are either a postmodernist or a modernist. But I don't feel that I am either. Modernists are portrayed as not just aspirers towards truth but as those who claim to possess it, but that surely is a travesty. I wouldn't know where to put C. S. Peirce, for example, and his view of truth as the "limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief" in this dichotomy.
Likewise I have been much moved by Wilfred Cantwell Smith's distinction between faith and mere belief (where the latter is intellectual assent to a proposition) and his insistence that it is faith not belief that is the primary quality we need, yet at the same time retaining an immense commitment towards integrity in intellectual and scholarly pursuits. I wouldn't know which side of the dichotomy to put him either.
G
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The Undiscovered Country
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# 4811
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Posted
Psyduck, Unless I've missing the point you're making, I think you've misunderstood what I meant. Clearly some truths are more worth dying for than others (although whether it is justifiable to lie about what you believe when faced with torture is a different question) and there are times when the church has been plainly wrong in what it believed-such as with whether the sun orbits the earth. However even on those occeasions the fact that earth rotates around the earth was the truth (and so God's truth) regardless of what anyone believed. My point was that what is truth cannot change according to what I and anyone else believes or feels. Our understanding of truth may change but the truth was still the truth even before any of us understood what that truth was.
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. Therefore all hope of progress rests with the unreasonable man.
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Glenn Oldham: quote:
I wouldn't know where to put C. S. Peirce, for example, and his view of truth as the "limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief" in this dichotomy.
If you want to confuse yourself stll further, in a sumptuous way, about this dichotomy, spend a Christmas book token on a book called The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. Peirce (and his formidable dad!!!) feature largely in it, as do William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes and of course Dewey. I came away from it really ashamed of my ignorance of the American intellectual tradition (and the condescension inbred into peoople from this side of the Atlantic) and with a far better understanding of the American philosophical mind-set. But I also came away with the feeling that the roots of philosophical postmodernism are more widespread, and go back further, than I had thought.
Jeff Featherstone: quote:
My point was that what is truth cannot change according to what I and anyone else believes or feels.
I do appreciate that, but that's not actually what you said. And since the truth about God's relationship with me is partly to be found in my relationship to God, and partly also in the way in which my relationship to God is lived out in my relationship to other people, it does actually make a profound difference what I know, and wht I believe. For God to love a universe in which his love is utterly unknown is a very different thing from his loving a universe in which there is a Church to know, respond to and preach that love. What you actually said was quote:
God and all the truths about Him and the way He made the world and mankind to operate are true even if no one believed them.
- and I just can't agree with that.
Anyway, it'll be Christmas day before I get back to this PC - so have a blessed Christmas, and everone else out there likewise.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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AB
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# 4060
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Posted
Jeff,
Echoing psyduck above earlier, I think you are coming from the modernist mindset, where faith and conduct is about propositional truths. "The truths of God" would prompt the postmodern to say, I accept that there are truths about God, but I dispute your claim to have them all. They will deconstruct the 'simple undisputable truths of God" and ask:
#1 Since much of our understanding is influenced by our culture, why must that understanding then be fixed for another culture? (metanarrative)
#2 How do you know your version of truth is correct? How is your 'flavour' of faith more 'true' than anothers?
#3 Where is your authority placed, and what corrupting influences are there on that authority? Has that authority been earnt or been assumed?
#4 What are the fruits of such truths? Is it virtous to accept them too?
To give you an example of this conflict, let me give you some hypothetical discussions between a modernist Christian and a postmodern.
Christian: You must accept the truths about God even if you don't understand them because God is God and you are His creation.
Postmodern: How do you know the truths about God?
C: From the Word of God, the Bible.
P: How do you know that it can be trusted?
C: Because it is the Word of God, divinely given to us by God
P: But how do we know that?
C: Because it tells us so, and communities of believers have believed as we believe
P: But what if the Bible is wrong, wouldn't that invalidate it's claim to be trusted, since you could no longer believe its claim to authority?
C: But it is God's Word
P: How do you know?
C: etc...
P: How do you know your understanding of truth is correct, when other flavours of faith in Christianity disagree about this or that point?
C: It's simple, it says here....
P: But group X believes this and group Y believes that from the same subject matter - how are you sure you are right and they are wrong?
C: We have reasoned and understand it.
P: But haven't group X and Y reasoned also?
C: Yes but their reasoning was wrong and ours is right
P: How do you know?
C: Because we have reasoned and understand it.
P: But haven't group X and Y reasoned also?
C: etc...
P: But hasn't believing what you have believed caused people to justify horrendous actions in the past?
C: Yes, but they weren't true Christians, we now know that these things were wrong.
P: But don't you still justify certain controversial stands now, just as they did then?
C: Yes, but have reasoned and understand the truths of God.
P: But didn't they think that back then?
C: Yes, but they were incorrect in their assumptions and understanding.
P: But how do you know that your are not incorrect in your assumptions and understanding now?
C: Because we have reasoned and understand the truths of God.
P: But didn't they think that back then?
C: etc...
What this is trying to illustrate is fighting postmodernism with modernism simply won't work, every discussion will end up in a circular argument. What is important to realise is that this is honest questioning, very often our modernist claims to truth are based on faith, which is no bad thing, but if we accept that, then we can no longer peddle our truth as the Truth. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that boldly claiming truth when we do not explicitly know it to be so, is bearing false witness to our neighbours. The only trouble being that the modernist is liable to think that his truth claim is Truth while the postmodern has deconstructed it and knows it to not be the case.
I guess a follow up question will be about how we can verify any truth within Christianity, though this question is still, again, born of the modernist framework, but I would suggest that the answer to this has to do with the embodiment of truth rather that the proposition of truth, but I'll save that for another post!
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
Posts: 513 | From: not so sunny Warwickshire | Registered: Feb 2003
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
C.S. Peirce, as I recall, regarded himself as a species of Scotian Realist.
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
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Orb
Eye eye Cap'n!
# 3256
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Posted
quote:
Its an "Oooh! Shiny!" hermeneutics.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif) Thanks Psyduck. Sums up our age and how we have to make the Christian faith look to those on the outside.
If you're sceptical of what I just said, you really ARE a modernist.
AB: I'll check out some more McLaren...was very impressed with "Finding Faith".
[ 25. December 2003, 02:35: Message edited by: Singleton ]
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“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
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Glenn Oldham
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# 47
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AB:
Jeff,
Echoing psyduck above earlier, I think you are coming from the modernist mindset, where faith and conduct is about propositional truths.
...
To give you an example of this conflict, let me give you some hypothetical discussions between a modernist Christian and a postmodern. ...
And here again I am confused! Your dialogue could just as well be described as between a fundamentalist and a ratinalist! In other words between someone who is pre-modern (postmodernists tend to see fundamentalists as pre-modern rather than modern) and a (postmodernists tend to see rationalists as modernists).
Another source of confusion for me AB is that if you pick up a book such as Classical Modern Philosophers you will find it is about Enlightenment philospophers such as Hume, Kant, Locke, and so on. These are, you suggest in an earlier post, modernists. But they would never dream of arguing in the way that the fundamentalist Christian does in your dialogue and whom you label as a modernist.
And now for a bireif note on the issue of truth.
It seems to me that Jeff is simply saying that {what the universe is actually like} is in a great part independent of {what we think the universe is like}. And that {what the universe is actually like} is the truth that we seek to discover and articulate in our theories (in {what we think the universe is like}).
This seems entirely sane and sensible to me, unlike the grandiosity of some postmodernist views whereby you really do 'create your own reality' in an unashamedly cosmic way. In contrast with this postmoderny view it seems clear to me that there are things about the universe which we are subject to and which we cannot create or change ourselves.
Such a view of truth does not commit Jeff to the view that Christianity is purely or even primarily a matter of belief i.e. intellectual assent to propositions.
My main loathing of much postmodernism is that it seems to be intellectually lazy. If there is no such thing as truth then intellectual enquiry is a sham and we can just play games instead. I find this morally bankrupt and intellectually bankrupt as well. Whether something better can be salvaged from the insights of postmodernism is something that I would be interested to find out.
G
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The Undiscovered Country
Shipmate
# 4811
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
quote:
Originally posted by AB:
Jeff,
Echoing psyduck above earlier, I think you are coming from the modernist mindset, where faith and conduct is about propositional truths.
...
To give you an example of this conflict, let me give you some hypothetical discussions between a modernist Christian and a postmodern. ...
And now for a bireif note on the issue of truth.
It seems to me that Jeff is simply saying that {what the universe is actually like} is in a great part independent of {what we think the universe is like}. And that {what the universe is actually like} is the truth that we seek to discover and articulate in our theories (in {what we think the universe is like}).
This seems entirely sane and sensible to me, unlike the grandiosity of some postmodernist views whereby you really do 'create your own reality' in an unashamedly cosmic way. In contrast with this postmoderny view it seems clear to me that there are things about the universe which we are subject to and which we cannot create or change ourselves.
Such a view of truth does not commit Jeff to the view that Christianity is purely or even primarily a matter of belief i.e. intellectual assent to propositions.
G
Exactly. Thanks for putting it a lot clearer than I was putting it myself!
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The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. Therefore all hope of progress rests with the unreasonable man.
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
Jeff, Glenn,
Indeed - classical modern philosophers would never argue in the way that I have (albeit crudely) illustrated, but Christians in the mordern mind set have, and I'm sure will continue to argue in those very ways. The enlightenment philosophers and their thinking have paved the way to where we are now, popular culture has never matched their actual thinking though.
The illusion of modernity was that everything could be understood and described, the illusion of post-modernity will almost certainly be that nothing can. Both are I'm sure quite wrong, so I think both of us are arguing for the right things.
However I stick to my point that if someone says fact X is True for everyone, that they had better illustrate with something demanding authority that this is so. This simply doesn't happen with many classical propositions within Christianity, which start from a base assumption accepted acritically that is left unexamined but allowed to drive all further arguments. If a good feature of post-modernism is that it stops that kind of lazy thinking, than that is unequivocally a GoodThing™
Glenn, if I have been guilty of over generalising the modern mindset, then I feel you do a similar injustice with post-modern thinking. Many post-moderns I know are intellectually hungry for the truth, often searching much harder and longer than equivelents I know who see the world differently. Far from being lazy they will analyse and critique most truth claims often more than they should. That there is fault in this is not in doubt. However there is more spiritual hunger in the younger generations than has ever been before.
On the subject of truth - I think we both agree about your definition, but I think you over generalise the post-modern position. It is simply that we cannot move to a influence-neutral position to understand and explain said truth, not that truth does not exist and that we should not strive for it. The modern says truth is knowable, the postmodern says that this is not //necessarily// so.
Hope this helps,
AB
(apologies for lack of philisophical quotage, but I'm at home for Christmas and away from my books and stuff!)
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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magnum mysterium
Shipmate
# 3418
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AB:
As a postmodern, I'm naturally sceptical of things written 'with an agenda' But I will try and hunt it out.
But postmodernists realise that nothing is ever written without an agenda (conscious or otherwise)! Of course, this does not mean that "anything goes" on a practical level. But one cannot just read the things one agrees with and call them "unbiased".
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Orb
Eye eye Cap'n!
# 3256
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Posted
Postmoderns also see each "text" as having many readings. There could be very many different meanings in a text that the original author didn't even intend. Now how does THAT change concepts of biblical interpretation?! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
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“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Singleton: I think it helps us get beyond the impasse of "The Bible says..." versus "Linguistic evidence renders it improbable that Colossians was written by Paul, but much of his thought..." I think it turns Biblical scholarship into fascinating strands of commentary on a text, to which we can attend, but without absolutizing it into a metanarrative of "what the Bible is" - which provokes the conservative metanarrative of "what the Bible really is". It helps us to attend to the text in lived encounter - and to be happy with the fact that "in the providence of God" - and I mean that most sincerely (though non-metanarratively!) folks! - the central things of our faith are mediated to us by these texts. I find that my sermons are littered with things like "The Jesus of John says..." or "The Paul of I Corinthians says..." and it doesn't sound at all unnatural to me - or mny congregation, I think.
It also allows us to see the way in which truth works in Scripture. Truth on a particular issue, for instance, isn't wholly contained in a particular proposition in Leviticus. Truth is what we encounter as we read. What we're led into all of, by the Holy Spirit.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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AB
Shipmate
# 4060
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Posted
psyduck,
AB
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"This is all that I've known for certain, that God is love. Even if I have been mistaken on this or that point: God is nevertheless love."
- Søren Kierkegaard
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by AB:
The illusion of modernity was that everything could be understood and described, the illusion of post-modernity will almost certainly be that nothing can. Both are I'm sure quite wrong, so I think both of us are arguing for the right things.
However I stick to my point that if someone says fact X is True for everyone, that they had better illustrate with something demanding [providing? G.O.] authority that this is so. This simply doesn't happen with many classical propositions within Christianity, which start from a base assumption accepted acritically that is left unexamined but allowed to drive all further arguments. If a good feature of post-modernism is that it stops that kind of lazy thinking, than that is unequivocally a GoodThing™
Glenn, if I have been guilty of over generalising the modern mindset, then I feel you do a similar injustice with post-modern thinking. Many post-moderns I know are intellectually hungry for the truth, often searching much harder and longer than equivelents I know who see the world differently.
Yes, AB, good stuff, I would agree with what you have said in your last post.
Yes, I have over-generalised about postmodernism, taking the more objectionable and extreme parts of it as representative of the whole. I was thinking in particular of those who, for example, deny that language can refer to reality; who say that truth is socially constructed and that this means that any narrative is as good as any other and that claims to knowledge thus all boil down to power.
But the less extreme version says things like 'our current views of gender are not necessarily how the world really is or has to be, our views are culturally and socially developed (or socially constructed, as they say) and need to be examined and changed or abolished so as to remove oppression. This kind of enterprise is vitally important and liberating, but is only liberating if it keeps a concept of truth. Is practice X oppressive or not? If this question is ruled out of court because there is no such thing as truth and that everything is relative then the liberation promised by this approach is lost and unattainable. (Which is why I loathe the obscuratism of the more extreme postmodern gurus.)
Claims to truth need to be critically examined and our means of assessing truth also need to be critiqued. One need not be postmodern to believe this, but perhaps more people think this way nowadays than did in the past.
Glenn
Posts: 910 | From: London, England | Registered: May 2001
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Glenn Oldham
Shipmate
# 47
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by psyduck:
If you want to confuse yourself stll further, in a sumptuous way, about this dichotomy, spend a Christmas book token on a book called The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. Peirce (and his formidable dad!!!) ... I came away from it ... with a far better understanding of the American philosophical mind-set. But I also came away with the feeling that the roots of philosophical postmodernism are more widespread, and go back further, than I had thought
You have mentioned this book before Psyduck. Thanks for mentioning it again. I will seek to so confuse myself!
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This entire doctrine is worthless except as a subject of dispute. (G. C. Lichtenberg 1742-1799 Aphorism 60 in notebook J of The Waste Books)
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Actually it's very lucid! The only reason it confuses me is that I find that my understanding of these areas collapses back into convienient and inappropriate little pigeon-holes so easily - and they don't actually fit! I'm actually re-reading a segment of it that deals with C S Peirce at the moment, to remind myself what it says about his own self-classification (partly because of the Christmas Eve post from Amos, above.)
And it also gave me a completely new take on the American Civil Between The States Of Northern Agression War (or whatever we should call it so that we don't offend anyone by our ignorance which, I'm ashamed to say, having read this book, is vaster in my case than I ever imagined) and just how much it did to commend a certain detached relativism to a society that had been torn apart by absolutes.
But I'd hate to give the impression that it's a confusing book. It's not, at all. Well worth a token. Or actual cash.
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Edward Green
Review Editor
# 46
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Posted
To wander back to the question:
What makes Christianity a Metanarrative? Surely Christianity is more of a collection of disparate fictions?
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
Edward::Green: quote:
What makes Christianity a Metanarrative?
The Reformation? The Magisterium? The sixteenth century generally? Or maybe the seventeenth?
Modernity?
Hmmm...
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
ALPHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
Posts: 5433 | From: pOsTmOdErN dYsToPiA | Registered: Feb 2002
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
And why not disparate truths?
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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Amos
Shipmate
# 44
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Posted
That triple post was so postmodern and disparate, psyduck. Showy, I call it.
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At the end of the day we face our Maker alongside Jesus--ken
Posts: 7667 | From: Summerisle | Registered: May 2001
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Psyduck
Ship's vacant look
# 2270
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Posted
It's just a text. A postmodern text. There's no author to be showy...
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The opposite of faith is not doubt. The opposite of faith is certainty.
"Lle rhyfedd i falchedd fod/Yw teiau ar y tywod." (Ieuan Brydydd Hir)
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Glenn Oldham:
But the less extreme version says things like 'our current views of gender are not necessarily how the world really is or has to be, our views are culturally and socially developed (or socially constructed, as they say) and need to be examined and changed or abolished so as to remove oppression. This kind of enterprise is vitally important and liberating, but is only liberating if it keeps a concept of truth.
That looks less like postmodernism and more like critical realism, the view that there is an external reality and absolute truth, yet recognizes that there is no way that we can be observers of the world without having a framework of presuppositions, values, and controlling stories--in short, a worldview--to make sense of our observations.
Contrast this with modernism, which holds the conceit that one can be a detached observer lacking any presuppositions, standing outside all worldviews. That is a form of naïve realism.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
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