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January 25, 2011

The Postmodern Turn

It is everywhere. The term Postmodernism is in the water these days. It is has been appropriated by a new generation of evangelical theologians who have embraced it as strongly as progressive theologians latched on to Liberation Theology 30-40 years ago. They both come from the same new deep philosophical pool and it seems for all religious thinkers – left and right – there is no turning back.

We are living in an era of philosophical change that is finally manifesting in everyday life. The same way that the Protestant Reformation depended on and fueled the Newtonian Revolution, Postmodern Theology depends on and is fueling the human manifestation of the physical truths revealed in the Einsteinian Revolution. What was solid is now porous. What was fixed is now not only undetermined but undeterminable. Even Descartes, “I think, therefore I am” goes out the window when the individual self is rejected. We are a bundle of conflicting identities. We are Legion.

I could go on and on in this area which I find to be the most fascinating discussion afoot in the church. But to help offer some shorthand help to those who need to be able to talk intelligently about this new day in theology, here is a very brief primer comparing old line systematic modernist theology with Postmodern thought.

Modernist Postmodernist

Trust absolute truth	Reject absolute truth – meaning is constructed
Biblical Monotheism - only know God through Christ	Spiritual pluralism - all religions have legitimate truth claims
Personal relationship	Group relationships (spiritual community)
Objective knowledge (science, math, history...)	Critiques the power relationships behind all truth claims
Sexual boundaries fixed by God	License to choose one’s own sexual identity
Logical, scientific perspective	Open to mysticism and spiritual exploration
Emphasize doctrine	Emphasize story and personal discovery
Objective teaching	All teachings are subjective narratives
Seriousness of intention and purpose, middle-class earnestness..	Play, irony, challenge to official seriousness, subversion of earnestness
Determinacy, dependence, hierarchy.	Indeterminacy, contingency, polycentric power sources.
Sense of unified, centered self; "individualism," unified identity.	Sense of fragmentation and decentered self; multiple, conflicting identities.
Hierarchy, order, centralized control.	Subverted order, loss of centralized control, fragmentation.
Faith in "Grand Theory" (totalizing explanations in history, science and culture) to represent all knowledge and explain everything.	Rejection of totalizing theories; pursuit of localizing and contingent theories