A general and wide-ranging term which is applied to literature, art, philosophy, architecture, fiction, and cultural and literary criticism, among others. Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality. In essence, it stems from a recognition that reality is not simply mirrored in human understanding of it, but rather, is constructed as the mind tries to understand its own particular and personal reality. For this reason, postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one’s own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal.
Postmodernism is “post” because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characterisitic of the so-called “modern” mind. The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philospher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism “cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself.”
Good old Google. Here is a very short talk by a seminarian about post modernism and the challenge to Christianity (and everything else we might want to hold on faith).
Well … all these Christian apologists (and everybody else so acclimated to reacting to them from every which side) had better fasten their seatbelts! Because (at least around here), we’re about to discuss a “new” player in town! Well - okay, Penner published his book in 2013 and it really discusses Kierkegaard’s ideas from a couple centuries ago. But still … these ideas haven’t permeated through much of our culture yet, if Christian school culture in my neck of the woods is any indicator.
So the upcoming discussion should be a pretty fresh look at ideas that seem long overdue for examination.
Beginning with our popular culture level assumptions about “modernism” and “postmodernism”. Get ready to have your ideas about both of those categories shaken up. At least that’s what it looks like to me already, only a couple chapters in.
Yep. While the Quakers look for a way back to a pre modern world and most of us today I believe are still running Enlightenment 1.0, some of us will look for a way to get comfy in a new normal, post modern world. Really I think we’ll be looking to see what we can take with us. I’d say those on your team who have been making your peace with faith which you hold without converting it to certainty on the strength of your own rational machinations will have the advantage. I hope to have gained some of that advantage by virtue of recognizing what among my own beliefs are necessarily sustained by faith and can’t be argued as being true for everyone in any sense I should be able to convince everyone of.
According to this explanation, I would be 50% post-modern because I think this accurately describes the subjective aspect of reality. But there is also an objective aspect to reality which is NOT just interpretation. As for explanations, people require different things from them – sometimes rather subjective things. But scientific explanations are different. They are demonstrable and thus the same for everyone according to written procedures which give the same result no matter what you believe or interpret. But science is not metaphysics – that much is true. Telling us what is the ultimate reality is not the business of science but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t inform our understanding of reality. It cannot confine our understanding, but it is foolish to ignore it also.
Indeed. This will end in the skepticism of skepticism itself, and accepting the role of subjective participation in living your life means that you have to make choices in faith. Faith because you want to live even though certainty is discarded as chasing after an illusion. You just choose in the process of deciding who you are, which is not something anyone or anything is going to be able to tell you.
Me too. No one should want to lose the clear view of what is going on around us that science provides. I doubt post modernism will qualify anything about that aside from when discerning when to tap into the one or the other in deciding what we want to do. Mostly I see it as a check against the intrusion of rational thought into every pursuit.
Last one … honest. Decided to look for a video on Kierkegaard’s ideas to give a better idea of how he factors in. This one is about 19 minutes long and was easy to take in. I definitely have a better handle on what he is about than the other couple things looked into. Wonder if @vulcanlogician has any experience with Kierkegaard? Apparently he is considered the father of Existentialism, which may appeal to @mitchellmckain
I will not have much access ro a computer, and therefore this discussion, for the next while. I look forward to reading the discussion, when I do have access. It might be a while until I have time to contribute much myself.
I have been putting recommended resources into Slide 9 and will continue to, when I can, but there will be lags until I have normal computer access again.
Recently I came across this quote and I’m going to be weighing it against what Penner actually says. I’m suspect that it wrongly characterizes his words, but I’m also hopeful the two views can be reconciled.
“The Evangelical philosophers James K. A. Smith, Myron B. Penner, and Carl A. Raschke claim that most forms of natural theology are dependent on modern conceptions of reason, truth, and language… According to these authors, notions like objectivity, neutrality, and rationality are various forms of idolatry, and any philosophical dependence on knowledge informed by these values will be a kind of idolatry.”
This book looks like a rebuttal to Penner’s thesis which we’re about to start discussing tomorrow. Just reading the blurb about Shepardson’s book here - it appears to have been written almost directly with Penner (or other authors like him) in mind. So it might be an interesting exercise after we’ve discussed Penner’s thesis to then look at a book like this one to see if the “modernists” give a successful or satisfactory reply.
I do note that our anticipated discussions here are all happening within the very modernist paradigm that Penner is questioning. I.e. - we are all about to use the very tools which Penner (and apparently Kierkegaard long before) claims to have already shown to be faulty instruments with regard to the most important questions of life. So by approaching Penner’s book with analysis, and potential arguments and rebuttals in mind, we are already “falling into his trap” that he has foreseen.
But that said, as intrigued (and even sympathetic) as I am with Penner’s thesis, I think it remains to be seen if Penner’s challenge to modernity is, in fact, successful. So … one book at a time! We’ll let Penner speak for himself (and Kierkegaard) and see how that goes. It may well be that we ourselves anticipate much of the response that Moreland and the current modernest army of apologists will give.
Added edit: I shouldn’t refer to Penner’s thesis as “a trap” as if he was crafting some new argument. In fact, arguments and “reasoning our way through all this” is precisely what he is trying to back away from himself. So perhaps I should say it this way … we’re all pulling our chairs up to the very table whose legs Penner alleges are faulty and/or inadequate. I’ll be eagerly waiting to see if Penner succeeds with getting us to consider all these things on ostensibly “non-modernist” grounds.
Merv, I’m going to push back on this a bit. I understand why you’re saying this, and I’ve been to this point many times with work like Penner’s. His point is subtle, and it is not as broad (at least in the case of this book) as some postmodern critics. Penner is NOT saying that reasoned critical analysis is always inappropriate or impossible, but that it is inappropriate or impossible in the case of apologetics or any discussion of ultimate truths.
So our discussion of the book, is not quite the same as actually applying those Enlightenment critical tools to the actual defense of the faith. In one case we are talking about apologetics, and in the other we are trying to “apologize”. Penner is showing us that the tools for one are not appropriate for both.
Other critics would say that even the discussion we are attempting is impossible — yet they continued to write and write and write, using similar tools, even in verbal acts of subversion…… We can’t help ourselves, can we?
I agree. Please, one book at a time. I do hope that for those who are interested though, this book leads to further study and consideration of the things Christianity and Postmodernism have to say to each other. I’m frustrated, doing side-research or following up on titles that Penner and others mention, to find out that while for decades I’ve been sitting on the deeply challenging and valuable critical theory I worked with, there have been Christian thinkers really working with these ideas, not merely mischaracterising them, and arguing against them. My little follow up was unsurprisingly of the second category. I could be at a very different place right now, if I had known others were working well with it at the same time.
Mike,
I hope your enthusiasm to know this subject area better continues long after Penner’s book is just a vague memory. I have a feeling it will. I don’t think the discussion can handle two books right now, and it will be much easier to find refutations of anything PoMo from Christian writiers.
I’ll add this book you mentioned to the Further Reading resources on slide 9, when I am able. Next week at the earliest. Feel free to remind me, if I forget.
I wasn’t even remotely suggesting it, nor do I even have the imagination to see myself reading it in the foreseeable future. But I will be reading Penner with a mind to see if he even insinuates that natural theology is a kind of idolatrous practice. From what I’ve read so far, I don’t suspect he’ll do it.
Oh, and I’m not suggesting the book be added to the further reading list.
“So the degree to which we accept the Enlightenment picture of the world and assume its values is also the degree to which we will be oblivious to the changes our culture has undergone in the Enlightenment.”
My basic understanding is the Enlightenment proposed a belief that reason (singular) would be the basis for a good society apart from God.
The problem in political philosophy is that there are two principles of economic justice (or reason) and there is not a value-neutral basis for determining when they apply.
In other words, as Smith has said elsewhere, we can’t think our way out of this mess.
Thanks for the reply and push-back, Kendel. Don’t feel like you need to take any of my seeming preliminary criticisms (more questions really) of Penner’s work too seriously, as I’ve only just finished chapter 2. So while I may be trying to anticipate some objections or questions that I still have - these are based on my initial reading of a very difficult and densely packed work. He may well answer all my questions by the end of it. I’m already very sympathetic (in agreement even) with his charge that modern Christian apologists have “sold the farm”, so to speak, by uncritically absorbing and using enlightenment assumptions - thereby making them a hidden new (and Penner would say ‘illicit’) foundation for the faith rather than a more proper pre-modern foundation. (and again - I realize I’m still not getting that quite right either, and may need to come back to correct this later when I begin to understand Penner better.)
I am motivated (biased, even) toward giving Penner a fair - even positive hearing for my own part, having already shared deeply in some of these suspicions of modern apologetics myself. But … I want to also see it all shaken and rattled around in the crucible around here; to see what, if anything of Penner’s, survives after intelligent skeptics and indignant apologetics defenders here spent all their powder and shot on it.
I have always felt uncomfortable with apologetics as I understand it and have seen it practiced. It seemed forced, and reliant in forms and formulas that attemot to force one into a line of thinking that allowed the apologist control without admitting it. It has always felt like something practiced at a used car lot, more than any sort of opportunity to learn about and get to know a majestic and loving God. It feels like a game of chess, played to win. Not an introduction to Jesus.
Apologetics has always felt like something for “experts” to do. Of course Penner’s book grabbed me, when I read around the introduction.
Apologetics today relies on vocabulary and concepts that have been divorced from their original context. This means that we can only partially, if at all, think and say the kinds of things that early Christians thought and said about God, reality, Jesus, etc. to demonstrate the reasonableness of our faith.
This claim and others like it have always brought to my mind the old tv show “I Search Of” hosted by Leonard Nimoy, where “mysteries” and “the unexplained” were presented out of any actual context and subjected to kooky, fantastical interpretations that often lead to proof that Alien Life had communed with primative, yet advanced, ancient civilizations. A very inelegant example, but it shows the silliness we can create, when we are unaware of the limits of our knowledge and even reason.
For the sake of understanding Penner’s theses and arguments, and for the book discussion, I am going to provisionally believe Penner and the PoMo critics (as I have been doing for a long time) that the project of the Enlightenment really did completely alter our vocabulary, way of thinking and understanding. Being able to actually evaluate these claims will take a whole different kind of study—Unless of course, Kierkegaard wrote clearly about it.
