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Hello, all! In graduate school we had many discussions on post-modernism and Christianity. There were some very vocal advocates for a "post-modern" church. Here are some initial reflections on "post-modern faith". Do you think there is anything that the Byzantine Catholic Church can learn from this movement? Any dangers we should avoid? Are there certain ways in which the vision for Byzantine Christianity may help answer some of the fundamental aspirations of the post-modern generation? As missionaries of the Byzantine Catholic Gospel, I think it is critical that we remain aware of some of the spiritual and social trends that exist in our cultural milieu if we are to reach others for Christ. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. In Christ, Gordo Postmodernism is the cultural worldview that now penetrates and owns our society. This worldview deeply values the following: spirituality, pluralism, the experiential, relativity, altruism, community, creativity, the arts, environmentalism, globality, holism, and authenticity. In many ways we are transitioning away from the "modern" values of rationalism, science, dogmatism, individualism, pragmatism, capitalism, nationalism, compartmentalism, and veneered religiosity. The postmodern cultural context is very similar to that of the New Testament. Therefore we believe that God's message will not only survive, but will thrive in this cultural milieu. Moreover, since many of these values are intrinsic to the Christian worldview, the church can use them as a bridge to our culture and society. We also understand and affirm that some postmodern values and ideas are in dynamic tension with Christianity, and we seek to gently but firmly challenge these, both in ourselves and in our culture. Source: What is postmodernism and what does it have to do with the church? http://www.mosaicfw.org/faq%20-%20what%20is%20postmodernism.htmWe are witnessing a broad based backlash against reason in our culture. This backlash is widely promoted in contemporary higher education. The argument is that every time somebody claims to be in possession of the truth (especially religious truth), it ends up repressing people. So its best to make no claims to truth at all. Rejecting objective truth is the cornerstone of postmodernism. In essence, postmodern ideology declares an end to all ideology and all claims to truth. How has this seemingly anti intellectual outlook gained such wide acceptance in history's most advanced civilization? That question requires us to understand how postmodernists conceive the past three hundred years of western history. Postmodernism abandons modernism, the humanist philosophy of the European Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinking is based on the authority of French philosopher Rene Descartes' autonomous man--the one who starts from his own thought ("I think, therefore I am") and builds his world view systematically from reason alone. Naively, postmodernists charge, modernists assumed that the mind was a "mirror of nature," meaning that our perceptions of reality actually correspond to the way the world is. From this presumption, modernists built a culture that exalted technological achievement and mastery over the natural order. Expansion-minded capitalism and liberal democracy, outgrowths of modernist autonomous individualism, subjugated the earth to the eurocentric, male dominated paradigm. But modernism planted the seeds of its own undoing. As arrogant, autonomous modernists conquered the globe and subjugated nature in the name of progress, oppressed and marginalized people have responded. "Progress toward what?" they cry. Postmodernists say that the idols of autonomous reason and technological proliferation have brought the modern age to the brink of disaster. The "myth of progress" ends up in a nightmare of violence, both for marginalized people and for the earth. Enter postmodernism. Postmodernism rejects modernism's autonomous individualism and all that follows from it. Rather than seeing humanity as an ocean of individuals, postmodernists think of humans as "social constructs." We do not exist or think independently of the community with which we identify. So we can't have independent or autonomous access to reality. All of our thinking is contextual. Rather than conceiving the mind as a mirror of nature, postmodernists argue that we view reality through the lens of culture. Consequently, postmodernists reject the possibility of objective truth. Reality itself turns out to be a "social construct" or paradigm. In the place of objective truth and what postmodernists call "metanarratives" (comprehensive world views), we find "local narratives," or stories about reality that "work" for particular communities--but have no validity beyond that community. Indeed, postmodernists reject the whole language of truth and reality in favor of literary terms like narrative and story. It's all about interpretation, not about what's real or true. Postmodernists hold that the pretense of objective truth always does violence by excluding other voices (regarding other world views to be invalid), and marginalizing the vulnerable by scripting them out of the story. Truth claims, we are told, are essentially tools to legitimate power. That's why in postmodern culture, the person to be feared is the one who believes that we can discover ultimate truth. The dogmatist, the totalizer, the absolutist is both naive and dangerous. A growing number, especially among the emerging generation, believe that reason and truth are inherently political and subversive. That's why they are often so cynical. According to the voices in contemporary culture that shape "Generation X" thinking, claims to truth are clever disguises for the pernicious "will to power." Consequently, rather than dominating others with our "version of reality," we should accept all beliefs as equally valid. Openness without the restraint of reason, and tolerance without moral appraisal are the new postmodern mandates. Source: Postmodernism: The 'Spirit of the Age', By Jim Leffel http://www.xenos.org/essays/relrev2.htmPostmodernism is an easy target, especially if you treat it as just another form of relativism�the old "what's true for you may not be true for me" dodge. But postmodernism is many other things, and many young believers must swim in its currents as they study, work, watch current movies, and relate to friends�especially in university contexts. A growing number of these Christians are embracing some postmodern ideas�not uncritically, but believing they offer an authentic context for Christian living and fresh avenues of evangelism. This openness to postmodern ideas makes many conservative Christians nervous. Indeed, the postmodern set often criticizes aspects of evangelical culture, and the pomo vocabulary sounds impenetrable to evangelicals' ears. Source: The Antimoderns: Six postmodern Christians discuss the possibilities and limits of postmodernism, Christianity Today, Nov. 13, 2000 http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/013/7.74.htmlMore Doctrine, Not Less We need to proclaim truth to a truth-impaired generation. Charles Colson "Don't fight postmodernity," the speaker, a popular theologian, exhorted the packed crowd of Christian educators. "Take advantage of it. Express experience over reason, image over words." But should Christians really be celebrating postmodernism? Admittedly, it's good that modernism, which jettisoned God in favor of reason, has collapsed. But postmodernism has rejected not only God and reason but also the very idea of universally valid truth. It teaches that individuals are locked in the limited perspective of their own race, sex, or ethnic group; claims to moral truth are viewed as oppressive. Postmodernism has thus radically altered the way many in this generation think about life's most basic suppositions. And as postmoderns begin filling our pews, it becomes increasingly hard for those who think in traditional terms to communicate the biblical view of life, or even to present the gospel. When we speak of truth�meaning binding absolutes�our postmodern neighbors hear just one more opinion among many. The biblical story, which we present as divine revelation, is seen merely as one of many, equally valid cultural narratives. This makes moral propositions increasingly problematic to postmodern listeners. For instance, how can we argue for the "common good" when postmodernists don't believe in a common good, seeking instead, as philosopher John Gray put it, merely "to reconcile conflicting goods"? We lack even a common language for moral discourse. When we use the term liberty, for example, we mean the classic definition, famously articulated by Benjamin Franklin: the right to do what is right. Our Founders tied freedom�the highest political goal�to moral truth. But postmodernism unties the knot; today, when newcomers to our pews hear the word liberty, they think the definition is "the unrestricted right to do what one pleases." It's a "right" codified by the infamous "mystery clause" in the Supreme Court's decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992): "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." This 180-degree turnabout stands government's role on its head, as Professor Russell Hittinger has written. In the modern era, government's role was to enforce commonly held moral beliefs, rooted in Scripture. But today, as decreed in cases like Roe v. Wade and Romer v. Evans, the role of government is to protect the individual from the imposition of moral values. But moral absolutes are our only guarantee of freedom. Without transcendent moral truths above individual preferences, human rights founder. What we're witnessing is the fulfillment of Nietzsche's formulation: "Languages of good and evil" are rooted in neither truth nor reason, but in the will to power. The vacuum of postmodernity means whoever is in power decides right and wrong. On its face, that's bad news for Christians. So how do we engage the postmodern mind? Some Christians�like that conference speaker�think we should join the postmodern bandwagon's emphasis on experience. One pastor told me that 10 years ago he could discuss moral truth with unbelievers, while "today I connect only on grounds of pain and compassion." But connecting only at the level of feelings is a weak reed for evangelism. Someone might "feel" right about Christianity�until those feelings change. And even a person who is drawn to Christ existentially has no context in which to understand those beliefs or the church's moral teachings. Significantly, a recent Barna poll revealed that the most common basis for moral decision-making among Christians is "doing whatever feels right" in a given situation. This is why, sadly, Christians and non-Christians divorce at the same rate. Postmodernism must be confronted, not accommodated. We must challenge its false presuppositions, lovingly explaining that there is truth and that it is knowable. In order to reach today's culture, seminarians, pastors, and laity, not unlike foreign missionaries, must learn to translate for today's postmoderns. For example, if we say, "The truth shall make you free," it means one thing to us�truth, that is Christ, makes us free from sin and death. But to the postmodern ear, it means "my preference" will make me free�to do whatever I want. Without translation, this becomes an invitation to cheap grace in the extreme. That conference speaker was wrong. We dare not embrace postmodernism. The gospel is not a matter of soothing feelings or rewarding experiences (although it may produce both). It is the Truth that postmodernists can stake their lives on. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2002/005/31.96.html
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gordon, great question and great quotes from multiple sources, from all sides.
i'm a postmodern myself, and can't help it - i'm young, went to secular schools, live in the city... so i guess i'm sympathetic and yet also skeptical (how's that for postmodern reasoning).
a way in which I think we can safely adopt a postmodern view is in biblical exegesis. i believe it is post-modern, that is, not emperical, not scientific, to believe biblical characters, the gospel they present to us, on their own terms.
e.g. for all the research that goes into finding out how in the world the red sea was parted, we can listen to the way the story is told and take it at its word. the sea was parted - that much we need to believe in order to make sense of the story. we don't REALLY need to know how in order to derive meaning from th story or to fit it in with the rest of the bible. the parting makes sense in its own way, in that the community of believers adopted it as part of their history, their faith. it is emperical in that it becomes part of the community's experience, but cannot be explained. itsn't that enough for us christians or must we always know why and how? can we not understand the bible from an "internal hermenutic", that is, by letting the "facts" it presents us as true in the context of the faith stories?
make any sense?
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Mari,
Excellent points, all! I would say, to build on your point about exegesis, that Scripture does invite us into something of an "internal hermeneutic", but that hermeneutic is principally "ecclesial." (Not in the sense of magisterial so much as coming from within the community.) The account of Exodus was written by Moses (who got by with a little help from his friends, if you believe the multi-source theories) in the context of a people and to give this people a sense of their own history and identity as a people formed and delivered by God. The Church, as the new Israel, has also recognized certain prophetic elements to this story which exist on multiple layers of meaning (aka the Patristic Quadriga or four-fold method of interpreting scripture).
As an example, the Red Sea exists as a definitive, revelatory, historical event but with the seed of prophecy concerning the coming Messiah. Just as Moses led his people out of bondage and slavery in Egypt by passing through the waters of the Red Sea into the promised land, so Jesus Christ, the New Moses, delivers us from bondage and slavery to sin when we as God's New People pass through the waters of baptism to be led on life's pilgrimage to the promised land of heaven, where He feeds us with the manna of His own Body and Blood, guiding us by the power of the Holy Spirit (Shekinah) through the wilderness of life where we offer spiritual worship to God as a priestly people.
Hence, the Church, grafted onto the vine of Ancient Israel, reads anew the history of her spiritual ancestry in the light of the Messiah and His New Covenant. Israel's story (metanarrative) becomes our story (metanarrative) in Christ.
That is one of the reasons why I think the four-fold method of biblical interpretation is much more appealing to post-moderns. The historical-critical method and other methods of higher criticism fail to satisfy the spiritual and communal aspects of the story. The Quadriga, to a large extent, takes exegesis out of the hands and micro-scopes of the "scientists" and places it squarely in the hands of the faithful, WHICH, as you can imagine, I believe it belongs!
My two cents!
Gordo
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Orthodox Christians need to be very careful about postmodernism. Certainly, the rejection of modernism, with its secular focus on man as the measure of all things, is a good trend. After all it was modernism, with its rejection of the classical tradition, that created our "post-Christian" society. Thus, I can agree that all orthodox Christians can rejoice in the present trend away from modernism.
Yet, whether this means embracing so-called postmodernism is another question. Philosopher Peter Lawler makes some very important distinctions that are relevant to our discussion. He points out that postmodernism as it is usually understood is the rejection of modernism in favor of the emphasis on the arbitrary character of all human authority, the radical freedom of each human being from every standard except his own desire and the rejection of any external measure not imbedded in a community (paradigm) of belief. Lawler suggests that postmodernism in this sense is better called "hypermodernism" for it takes the modernistic focus on the human individual will to its ultimate extreme. Whereas modernism is rationalistic in that it takes the function of reason as the means by which the human will transforms the world in accordance with the dictates of human desire, hypermodernism is the rejection of reason altogether. Reason becomes simply a human creation, a total exercise of will. Where the modernist still at least believed in nature, even if only as a tool, the hypermodernist aims to deconstruct any coherence remaining in the modernist world view. Thus, hypermodernism simply extends the instrumentalism and skepticism of modernism. Lawler suggests that the true postmodern is the one who completely rejects modernism and returns to the classical tradition with its faith in the rational coherence of reality as the image of the Creator and the human ability to know it and live according to it.
I would suggest that what seems attractive to the orthodox Christian in postmodernism is not the hypermodernism discussed by Lawler, but the possibility of a true postermodernism which is nothing other than the classical and Christian worldview originally rejected by the modernists. This classical worldview is not an internalist approach to reality so favored by the hypermodernist, but the metaphysical realism of the pagan Greek philosophers, the early Church Fathers, as well as Greek and Latin theologians of the Middle Ages. Yet, most of those who call themselves "postmodernists" are not those embracing the classical worldview.
The offending "rationalism" of modernism is not the dependence on reason, but the misuse of reason as an instrument of will rather than a source of understanding and formation. The classical tradition is certainly objectively rational in that it seeks to rationally articulate reality including both nature and its transcendent Author.
Thus, we orthodox Christians should be careful of jumping onto the postmodern bandwagon. It may free us from some of the secular pressures of modernism, but this may come at the cost of the ontological realism contained in and implied by our faith in the God of Abraham and His Incarnation in Christ. The rationalistic sin of modernism was not its reliance on reason, it was the misorientation of reason inward rather than outward to reality, created and Divine. As Pope John Paul remarks in his Fides et Ratio, the Christian of the True Faith does not forsake reason, but embraces it as the means given to him by his Creator to know and love Him and the world He created. Indeed, John Paul points out, it is the classical/Christian tradition that truly embraces reason and not the various modern "-isms" including "postmodernism" by which he clearly means "hypermodernism."
We can learn from postmodernism something of the errors of modernism, but we must be careful not to rush into an internalism which rules out the realism required by the teachings of Holy Doctrine.
Dr. Michael
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a response to gorgona nd to dr. michael:
gordon - the trouble i have with your interpretation of the red sea miracle in light of the new testament promise of salvation i s that the people who were actually drowned by the sea did not choose to be there. in new testament terms, they didn't choose "baptism." the jews, on the other hand, were led through the sea but were not touched by it - whereas in baptism, going under water is an important part of the ritual because it is like death, drowning, out of which we come to new life. anyhoo...
Dr. michael, in quoting John Paul II reminded me that that pope also said that ther is no harm in taking up conversation with and even adopting the good parts or facets of the "isms" swirling about us, but that our faith is NEVER reducable to any of them. it is not an ideology. so, perhaps, a conclusion to draw is, we can agree to disagree about whether or not and to what extent christianity has anything to do with post-modernism because in the end what matters is that we not equate christianity with it or vice versa.
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It is certainly true that we should rejoice in the truth wherever it is found. Thus, if we can learn the principles of textual interpretation from postmodern thinkers, fine.
My point was that we orthodox Christians must be careful. The modes of interpretation developed by postmoderns are used, not to bring us closer to the truth, for they do not hold a correspondence theory of truth. For the postmodernist, there is no truth external to our articulations that can be used to measure them. There is only truth in the sense of coherence within a paradigm. Such a view is inconsistent with orthodox Christian doctrine. Especially with respect to evangelization, it is important to avoid the fideism and religious solipsism to which postmodernism often leads.
A far better source for hermeneutical principles is the classical tradition. The Church Fathers developed especially sophisticated methods of textual interpretation that include all the insights of the postmoderns and more. Further, these methods were developed as a support to the faith and the realist metaphysics its implies.
Dr. Michael
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Hi Dr. Michael, I do appreciate all you are saying here. To put it briefly I am thinking of the movie years back-- Raiders of the Lost Ark. -- the scene where Indian Jones and an Arab (I think he was an Arab) face each other in the marketplace. The Arab takes out his sword, swings it a time or two, takes a step toward Jones, swings it again, as Jones looks at him quizically. Finally after this goes on a while...Jones simply takes out his pistol and shoots the Arab. A professor I had once at a university (with which we are both familiar) used this as an example of modernism vs classical thought. Jones, being the modernist, just shot the Arab. No messing around for him. :rolleyes: Well, I sure don't agree with that...but maybe that is what happens many times when the thinking is that only new is good, only advanced technology is good, and all else is archaic. We certainly can cherish and gleam from the wisdom of the Early Church Fathers and not shoot at them with our pistols of modernistic or postmodernistic thought. Again, thanks. In Christ and the Theotokos, Porter... 
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