The ‘P’ word needs to get a fair shake in Christendom. Well, more precisely, pomo philosophy deserves to be heard out. The problem is, the ‘P’ word carries a boatload of baggage. There’s pomo churches, pomo art, pomo architecture, pomo literature, pomo fondue, pomo-everything. (OK, the fondue one I made up.) It’s a word that has powerful descriptive capacity, yet manages to induce a fog of confusion the instant its definition is sought. As Schaeffer taught, when new concepts take hold in society, you can be sure that it started with the artists and the philosophers. I’d like to offer my services as a friendly guide through the murky waters of postmodern philosophy (kind of like Gopher on The Love Boat [cue theme]). The interested Christian has 3.7 zillion books available on this subject which take the view that pomo and Christianity are locked in a Texas cage match confrontation to the death. You won’t get that view from me; I think pomo philosophy rocks. To give you an idea of what a like-minded creature would have to say, let me introduce you to someone with real credentials, James K. A. Smith.

Here are three brief, accessible articles he’s written, two of which are especially relevant to recent posts here in the tavern:

1. A critical review of Eldredge’s Wild at Heart co-authored with Mark Mulder. Here’s a choice quote to whet your appetite: “Eldredge’s argument, though couched as counter-cultural, actually sustains a flawed caricature that ultimately inhibits men from fully realizing who they are in Christ. Perhaps most perilously, Wild at Heart both implicitly and explicitly minimizes the consequences of sin and the fall. To argue that there are separate ‘secrets’ for men and women in finding spiritual contentment suggests a kind of ‘selfhelp’ strategy that ignores the deep reality—and necessity—of grace.”

2. A post on theooze entitled “The Economics of the Emerging Church” in which he expresses suspicion of the socio-economic structures and direction of the so-called “postmodern” church.

3. His remembrance of Jacques Derrida written for Books & Culture. In case you’re wondering, he was mourning, not celebrating.

If you’re interested in reading a bit more of what I think postmodern philosophy is up to, read on. Otherwise, pass Go, collect your $200, and may fortune shine upon you.

The problem with postmodernism is that it doesn’t exist. By that I mean that it doesn’t exist as a well-defined set of doctrines that one can adhere to or reject, approve or disapprove. The ‘ism’ is misleading. So is the ‘post’. To ask “What is postmodernism?” is actually a modern question. The effort to understand the present age (whether it is Postmodern, the Industrial Age, the Enlightenment, etc.) and give a name to it is precisely what preoccupies the modern thinker.

So, do we live in a postmodern world? No and yes. No, in the sense that we continue trying to come to grips with “our time” through philosophical reflection. Yes, in the sense that modernism has been reconsidered and criticized. You can’t do that unless modernism (and here the ‘ism’ is appropriate) has sufficiently congealed and rigidified into an identifiable system of thought.

This is why pomo thinkers inundate us with jargon. They need new words because they’re trying to do some heavy lifting. The problem is, this is a big barrier for the non-philosopher in achieving an understanding of what pomo is up to. I cringe when I hear the word ‘deconstruction’ used in polite society, especially the pulpit. These technical terms have been disseminated into the wider world and they have soaked up some serious contaminants. Quite often, the popular use and the technical use have very little in common. Even proponents of pomo aren’t consistent in using their own jargon. So, little by little, I’d like to break down annoying terminology like ‘deconstruction’, ‘logocentrism’, ‘metanarrative’, ‘onto-theological’, ‘hegemonic’, etc. Perhaps this will help dispel the rumor that pomo and Christianity are snarling antagonists.

Let’s look at one of the magic words: ‘metanarrative’. With a hat tip to J. K. A. Smith, let me state right out front that this term in particular should show us that pomo legitimates the recovery of pre-modern views of reality, knowledge, and morality. Pomo itself has a strong connection to St. Augustine’s account of knowledge (faith precedes reason, “I believe in order to know”).

‘Metanarrative’ is a good place to begin because this term was used in the initial and tentative definition of “the postmodern condition” as worked out by Jean-Francois Lyotard. He defines ‘postmodernism’ as “incredulity toward metanarratives.” Sometimes, people think of a metanarrative as a “grand story,” a la Cecil B. DeMille: a story of epic proportions. It’s easy to think that the Biblical narrative qualifies as one of these “grand narratives.” Therefore, pomo’s distrust of metanarratives seems to place it in conflict with Christianity. The 3.7 zillion books (see examples below) I mentioned earlier all assume or reach this conclusion. And it couldn’t be more wrong. The Biblical story is not a metanarrative.

Let me explain. The distinctive feature of a metanarrative is how it legitimates its story. It is not an issue of the scope of a story, it’s what the story appeals to in order to lay a claim as authoritative. The Bible is a narrative with a grand sweep, a universal scope, and with pretensions of universal claims. But that does not make it a metanarrative. Why not? Because the biblical story claims its authority by appealing to faith. Like a myth, it tells a story that requires no further legitimation outside the story itself. It is auto-legitimating.

So what is a metanarrative? Any “grand story” that appeals to the authority of universal Reason. Besides the fathers of modernism (Descartes, Kant, etc.), other examples include Marxism (a humanistic metanarrative of emancipation, as is Kant), Hegel (the absolute life of the Spirit in German Idealism), and capitalism (Adam Smith’s metatnarrative about the creation of wealth). Pomo criticizes these systems because they claim to ground themselves outside of the tradition, customs, and community from which they spring. This is a failure to to own up to the metanarrative’s true ground in a myth of its own. So, pomo critique is not aimed at narrative per se. It does not entail an incredulity toward myth. It criticizes systems of thought that don’t own up to their narrative, mythic ground in faith claims.

Metanarratives are mere human constructions. They are relative, convenient fictions through which we impose an order on history and make it subject to us. Pomo is trying to shine the light on what it calls the “discourse of legitimation.” Wittgenstein calls these “language games.” Thomas Kuhn calls them “paradigms.” A community must share some original consensus on how its discourse is to be understood. From the outset, this narrative source of understanding is what provides the practical tools for speaking, writing, and communicating in the community. The attempt to claim that one’s legitimation lies outside its discourse (in universal Reason) is demanding the impossible. Pomo criticizes metanarratives because metanarratives deny their ground in a narrative even as they proceed upon it unacknowledged.

A paradigm, a language game, a discourse of legitimation, is that constellation of beliefs that have no outside legitimation; they are matters of faith. The reason why pomo often appears to be relativism (“Whatever!”) is because it does not claim to be able to adjudicate between competing paradigms. Different paradigms condition what is claimed to be the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Pomo does not assert that competing claims are arbitrary. It cannot assert relativism, for that would be implying that pomo uniquely possesses a legitimating source outside of the particular discourse in question; that would make pomo itself a metanarrative! Pomo is humble. It challenges secular philosophy’s claim to autonomy.

The texture of the biblical world-and-life vision is essentially literary and imaginative. It is proudly narrative in laying out the structure and direction of the Spirit-led life. The biblical narrative outfits us with the vision of Christ’s rule in the kingdom of God, and with a communal consciousness uniquely (but fallibly) attuned to walk (communally) in sustained, regenerative, reflective deeds of grace in society.

Where we get into trouble as Christian thinkers is when we seek external legitimation for our narrative. But once you go a-hunting for knowledge that is “certain” and indubitable, you have stepped out of biblical legitimation (myth and faith) and into a scientific legitimation (proof, evidence, logic, or other demands to eliminate the prejudice of a tradition). Thus, it is possible to abandon our narrative ground in Scripture and seek to retell our story as a metanarrative. And this is why I dislike the term ‘worldview’ so much. So many of its proponents are trying to lay out a view of Christianity that is based on reason preceding faith. That goes for almost all forms of apologetics, by the way, including so-called “presuppositional” apologetics.

The struggle with pomo is the struggle between faith and reason. Pomo wants all paradigms, all “discourses of legitimation,” all language games, to own up to their mythic ground. It looks around and sees lots of different language games and it frankly does not know how to translate between them. Pomo wouldn’t be pomo if it tried to. But at least it has created a space for this plurality of discourses to be respected. Pomo sees science and narrative in conflict and it takes the side of narrative. Pomo says that faith precedes reason and so it retrieves a theory of knowledge that is pre-modern.

St. Augustine’s posse includes Derrida and Gadamer, Polanyi and Kuhn, Foucault and (the later) Wittgenstein. All are incredulous toward metanarratives.

If you’re interested, I’ll post another pomo defense looking at another bit of its jargon (maybe ‘deconstruction’ would be fun). For the time being, if you have books by
James Sire (Naming the Elephant, The Universe Next Door)
Al Wolters (Creation Regained)
Brian Walsh (Truth is Stranger than it Used to Be)
Stanley Grenz (Primer on Postmodernism)
Brian Ingraffia (Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology)
or Henry Knight (A Future for Truth),
then you are now equipped to read them critically on their characterization of what pomo claims about Christianity (all of them believe that pomo is at odds with our faith because they think the definition “incredulity toward metanarratives” applies to the biblical story).