Posted by Matt in Christian Beliefs, postmodernism.
Tags: blog, Christianity, postmodernism, worldview
My friend Ryan told me last night that my blog entry from yesterday in which I introduced yet another blog for you to read, left the impression that the author was remaining anonymous….of course, though, he knew that I was the one writing it. That being said, I wasn’t striving for anonymity with yesterday’s post and I again invite you all to visit this second blog dedicated to the ideas of postmodern philosophy and Christian thought.
I will probably only update my postmodern blog on a weekly basis with in-depth entries (not to worry, Words of Wisdom will continue in its present, almost daily, form), though I may occasionally add in some music or articles for your enjoyment. So, make sure that you add it to your reader (if you happen to use Google Reader or Netvibes, or whatever) because I may not always remember to tell on here when I update it.
Today’s entry marks chapter 1 of this experiment and I hope that you will join me, both with your comments and critiques, as we move forward.
Posted by Matt in Bible, church, philosophy, postmodernism, science.
Tags: Christianity, church, metanarrative, modernism, postmodernism
We saw yesterday one way the Modern worldview affected the Christian faith, transforming it from one entrenched in community to one focused primarily on the individual, but that was certainly not the only influence exerted upon Christians in that time period. As we have mentioned in prior entries, the ideas espoused in modernity were based primarily in the areas of science and logic, with the scientific method and sensual observation becoming the ultimate arbiters of truth and reality. Data was compiled in lists and tables and categorized systematically in an organizational structure making concise observations of the world. This phenomena, though, was not only present within the confines of science, rather, it reached out and grasped whatever was in reach – including the Christian faith.
So, how did this affect the church? As Christians began to compile what they deemed to be essential, Christianity was reduced to just another collection of propositions.
Within The small corner of the Christian faith where I reside, the Church of Christ, this idea has run rampant over the years, turning the grand narrative of love and redemption into a series of bullet points. Looking at what was deemed to be the bottom line objective of following Jesus, getting to heaven, a plan of salvation was developed showing a step-by-step blueprint of how to receive eternal life with Christ. Lyotard called this type of action the “computerization of knowledge,” and it is through this idea that our flow chart of faith was developed.
But God’s revelation of Himself to all humanity was not given in bullet point form. It was not just some collection of facts and figures and flow charts. Instead, God chose to reveal Himself in the form of a sweeping narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, showing the rise and fall and ultimate redemption of His creation. It is a beautiful story, but one that loses its impact the more and more it gets boiled down into what is deemed “the essentials.” God didn’t choose to leave us with His celestial cliff notes. He didn’t choose to send his revelation in outline form. Rather, He chose narrative as the best means of communication. He chose to employ a format that would activate the reader’s imagination (one of the best gifts ever given to man) as they watch His grand story unfold throughout time.
So, what does this mean for the church in the postmodern world? How does it transform from the old, modern paradigm of thought and embrace a new way that displays its narrative character?
James K.A. Smith gives four characteristics of a storytelling church:
1) The role of Scripture is central – not just the text that mediates our understanding of the world, but also the Story that narrates our role in it.
2) They celebrate communion weekly – retelling the narrative of the gospel regularly as an active participant.
3) It resists the tendency of pragmatic evangelicalism, which “dumbs down” the story to make it accessible or attractive to culture. Instead, the postmodern church affirms the timelessness of the Biblical narrative and seeks to initiate listeners into it.
4) It recognizes that its primary responsibility is to live the story for the world – to faithfully play out the love of God in the church as a community of love and justice.
Comments?
Posted by Matt in church, philosophy, postmodernism, religion, science.
Tags: Lyotard, metanarrative, modernism, pluralism, postmodernism, relativism, truth
Again, thank you for reading and commenting. Let’s begin the third part of our look at Scripture as Metanarrative with a passage from the book of Mark:
“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36)
While the Enlightenment brought about great advances in across the scientific spectrum – from curing diseases to gaining a greater understanding of the world we find ourselves in – it also enacted quite a cost. The Christian faith faced relentless attacks from Modern thinkers, who branded it as little more than a fable that failed the rigorous tests put forth by a new, “enlightened” worldview. Many began to scoff at the idea of God and instead put their faith in the golden calf of progress and the myth that continual progress would lead to some utopian ideal. The world would be reinvented through technological progress and soon become a place free of war and hunger and hatred and, for that matter, religion. In the 20th century, the dream collapsed under the weight of world wars, mass killings, and an increase in worldwide poverty, leaving, by the end of the century, a pile of rubble where our Modern tower of Babel once stood.
The Christian faith suffered beneath the scourge of Modernity, which pushed it from the public sphere and, as those professing to faith began to accept the tenets of Modernism, the faith quickly moved from one entrenched in community to one unique to the individual. Where science and logic held the key to ultimate, objective truth, religion was seen as just another subjective experience that, in the grand scheme of things, meant very little.
The collapse of the Modern paradigm again brought humanity back to square one in terms of their understanding of the world. What would arise phoenix-like from the ashes and lead us to a brighter tomorrow?
There are a multitude of choices in today’s buffet line of life philosophies – you can accept any number of religions, you can bow to the nihilistic god of money and materialism, you can continue the Modern dream of science and strive for that unreachable goal of perfection.
Little is certain about what lies in the future, but those of the Christian faith can rejoice in the floundering Modern worldview – by its failure to live up to the lofty promises it proclaimed, the playing field has now been leveled, placing Christianity alongside the other metanarratives. Lyotard’s critique of metanarratives and reason has effectively relativized Modern claims of objective, universal truth, leaving an opening for the emerging Christian faith.
So, now that the Christian faith has been granted a place in the postmodern marketplace of ideas, we face the arduous task of maintaining it. First of all, Christians must be careful not to squander these openings using modern techniques that attempt to show the truth of the Christian faith using rational demonstrations and then impose them on a pluralistic culture. Rather, the postmodern apologetic will be based upon presuppositions. It will be one in which everyone will place their presuppositions on the proverbial table and then narrate their way through the Christian story, allowing others to see it in a way that makes sense through their own worldview.
Next: Becoming a Storytelling Church
Posted by Matt in Bible, philosophy, postmodernism.
Tags: Christianity, Lyotard, metanarrative, postmodernism, scripture
As I said last week, I am fascinated with the world of postmodern philosophy – particularly how it relates to a Christian worldview. Through a series of four short blog entries, we explored the claim of Derrida that, “there is nothing outside the text.” If you would like to review that discussion on Deconstruction and the Christian faith, here are parts 1, 2, 3, and 4.
Deconstruction showed us that we view the world through our own of interpretive lens that has been shaped by our life experiences and education, but many times there is something else, something large and encompassing, that shapes our vision and helps define our metaphor of reality. Now, that overshadowing cloud may be anything from the claims of truth as put forth by the world of science to those claims from the religions of the world. In postmodern thought, these conglomerates of claims to reality and truth are known as metanarratives.
While it may sound like the name of the bookmobile Transformer, the term metanarrative actually comes from the French idea of “grand recits,” meaning, “big stories.” Jean-Francois Lyotard, an important figure in postmodern philosophy, used this term to define the movement, saying that postmodernism is “incredulity toward metanarratives.” So, Lyotard would then say that postmodernism is a suspicion of or disbelief in these “big stories.”
Lyotard’s difficulty, though, is not in the “stories” themselves, but in the claims they make. In other words, it isn’t the stories they tell, it’s how they tell them. It is the appeal to a supposed universal reason and the claim of an absolute, universal “truth” that he finds bothersome.
In particular, Lyotard finds the somewhat pretentious claims of a scientific, rational search for an ultimate theory to everything (42?) the most troubling. For, in their endless theorizing, there will always be some underlying assumption, a foundation on which the reasoning relies. The Enlightenment of the 18th century attempted to place human reason as the cornerstone of all knowledge, but, over time, even reason has been shown to be faulty.
So, where postmodernism finds itself as incredulous to metanarratives due to their claims of overarching truth, it certainly recognizes the important role of narratives as the basis for what may be deemed as knowledge. Somewhere, below all of the facts and figures of modernity, there resides a story, a myth, which acts as the underlying principle that acts as a foundation to their notion of truth. As opposed to science and rationalism, where claims must be “proven,” narratives make no pretense to proof, but rather proclaim themselves within the context of the story. Thus, narratives become the building blocks of reality.
Thoughts? Should I be burned at the stake yet? More to come later…
Posted by Matt in deconstruction, philosophy, postmodernism, religion.
Tags: Christianity, deconstruction, Derrida, language, metaphor, postmodernism, relativism
Thank you, everyone, for your great comments on the last entry.
Yesterday, we took a cursory glance at Derrida’s claim that, “there is nothing outside the text,” and its implications that language is the filter through which we see the world. Language, then, is not simply what is actually written or spoken, rather it is the interpretations of our life experiences. The interpretations themselves may be of actual events or objects, but, the only way that we, as humans, have to express them is through the avenue of metaphor.
A simple example would be in your view of some concrete object. I look at my shirt and I see the color red. Waves of light are emitted from the sun, they bounce off my shirt and into my eye. My brain then instantly takes that snapshot of what it sees and compares it to prior knowledge, coming up with various descriptive words – one of which is “red.” I then unconsciously make a comparison with other “red” things I’ve looked at before in my life and think, “my shirt is red like a fire truck.” The only way for us to truly experience something is through a sort of comparative analysis that is usually done deep in the recesses of our brain. But, not everyone shares the same metaphors. Another person may look at my shirt and say to themselves, “his shirt is red like a stoplight,” or “his shirt is red like the barn near the house I grew up in.” The interpretations are not and can not be incorrect in this example (well, if say my shirt is blue then you may want to see a doctor), rather they are just based on prior knowledge gained from some life experience.
Thus, our interpretations are always based on some prior knowledge and experience.
Nobody has the same prior knowledge and experience.
Then, everyone has a different interpretation.
Therefore the “text” metaphor of our lives is relative to the individual.
Next: The Undeconstructible
Posted by Matt in deconstruction, philosophy, postmodernism.
Tags: Christianity, deconstruction, Derrida, postmodernism, relativism
The word “postmodernism” has become somewhat of a boogeyman around the Christian faith over the last several years, with many branding it as the latest threat to civilization as we know it. But, it is something that really fascinates me. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the philosophical idea of Deconstruction and how it relates to our current way of thinking in Christian circles.
For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Jacques Derrida coined it in the 1960’s as a form of literary/social criticism. Perhaps the best description of this branch of philosophy comes from his work, On Grammatology, in which he makes the earth-shaking statement, “There is nothing outside the text.”
So, we ask ourselves, what does this mean? What text is Derrida speaking of? Is this some mysterious, all-encompassing book with an impossibly universal scope?
Of course not, rather, the “text” in question is a metaphor for language itself. In this way of thinking, language is the filter through which we see the world. Texts and writing hold the central role of putting together our experiences of the world. Then, our reading of whatever text is in question, is colored by our experiences through our interpretations. But, this does not only apply to the written word, rather, it also applies to anything we may experience or hear or see. Everything is seen through the lens that we have crafted by our experiences.
I’m going home for the day now, but I’ll finish these thoughts in later entries. Are you familiar with this way of thinking and, if so, do you have any opinions?
Posted by Matt in church, god, postmodernism, theology, universalism.
Tags: church, class, postmodernism, theodicy, worldview
It’s taken some time for me to get up the nerve, but I brought up the idea with Ryan (my friend and a minister at our church) recently about teaching a Sunday School class. I’ve done it before, but it has been several years and at a different church, so I can’t help but be a little self-conscious about it.
Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve chosen a topic that will automatically set some people on edge: Faith in the Postmodern World (or something along those lines).
Over the last several years, I’ve done a good bit of reading on different philosophies (both old and new), exploring the murky waters of metaphysics and the roily world of relativism, but I can’t help but be a bit worried about the reception these types of topics will engender. Will every class turn into an unproductive argument?
I’ve been working on a rough outline lately and gathering material, in order to have a bit more concrete idea of what it might entail. Here are a few of the things I thought we might converse about:
- The change over time from a pre (or non)-modern to modern to postmodern view in society and what events/discoveries precipitated the evolution of ideas.
- Worldviews – in particular Christian worldviews from exclusivism to inclusivism to universalism
- Questions of theodicy and the evolution of the role (or non-role) of Satan.
- How do Christians/churches engage the postmodern world?
- What is the church of the future – is it missional, emergent, or something else? Also, What about the changing roles in the postmodern church.
And there are other subjects that have come to mind, but I am at work right now and can’t remember them. I have ideas to also utilize different types of media for the class – whether they be film clips, music, or whatever else may be appropriate. Another idea is to start a blog where the class members can keep in touch throughout the week and discuss pertinent material.
To me, the whole thing sounds like it could either be really cool or else I will be chased away by people carrying torches and pitchforks. What do you think? What topics would you find absorbing within this framework. What are some movies/TV shows/songs that come to mind when you think of the ideas surrounding modern/postmodern philosophies?
