Postmodernizing the Faith: Evangelical Responses to the Challenge of Postmodernism

Postmodernizing the Faith: Evangelical Responses to the Challenge of Postmodernism

by Millard J. Erickson
Published by Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 1998
163 pages, $15

reviewed by
Dan Simon
Innovatia Software
dansimon@innovatia.com

Erickson is a professor of theology with numerous books to his credit. He has been writing about postmodernism since 1990, and the present volume is based in large part on various lectures that he has presented. Postmodernism is the climate that follows modernism and describes much of the current intellectual atmosphere in the United States and elsewhere. Most people probably still subscribe to the modernist point of view, but more and more intellectuals are moving towards postmodernism. Modernism includes the view that reality is restricted to the observable laws of nature, while postmodernism asserts that reality includes unseen and even unknowable facets. Modernism believes in the inherent goodness of humanity and of knowledge, while postmodernism denies the goodness of humanity and casts strong doubt on the benefits of knowledge. Modernism believes that knowledge is objective and can (in theory) be discovered certainly. Postmodernism claims that knowledge is relative to the knower and can never be known certainly. Modernism teaches that each individual has the ability to achieve knowledge independently of his or her culture, while postmodernism asserts that individuals cannot obtain knowledge apart from a community. Modernism includes the belief that truth can be known only through the scientific method, while postmodernism asserts that truth is known not only through reason but also through other means, such as intuition. Modernism states that language can be accurately used to describe reality outside of language, while postmodernism says that language only refers to other language. This last point of postmodernism is called the deconstruction of language. Postmodernism, with its denial of objective knowledge and deconstruction of language, has become a major topic of discussion in academic circles. How are evangelical thinkers responding to this new trend? In Postmodernizing the Faith Erickson explores six evangelical responses – three positive and three negative – to postmodernism and offers his own reaction to the movement. Erickson's purpose is "to introduce readers to postmodernism, to sensitize them to the importance of the issues, and to show them some samples of differing evangelical responses."

Following an introductory chapter summarizing postmodernism, Erickson presents the responses of three evangelicals who consider the movement incompatible with orthodox Christianity. Next he details the thought of three evangelicals who believe "postmodernism is a development that needs to be accepted, and Christian theology done in light of it, and incorporating at least some of it." In each chapter Erickson offers a judicious critique, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of the particular view being discussed.

The first evangelical examined by Erickson is historian and theologian David Wells, author of No Place for Truth: Or, Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? Wells does not discuss postmodernism explicitly as much as he discusses the prevailing cultural climate, which he sees as postmodern intellectually but modern socially. In fact, the insistence on being postmodern indicates a desire to transend the past, which reflects a belief in progress and a bent towards the philosophy of modernism. So when Wells talks about modernism, he includes anything that is modern (including postmodernism). Wells' view of postmodernism is decidedly negative. He sees postmodernism making inroads to the church in the prevailing sentimentality that is interested in opinions more than truth, that wants to listen but does not want to discern what is right. He sees the church as departing from what it has historically been in that it is substituting personal reflection and pluralism for rigorous theology. Preaching has become therapeutic rather than biblical, and pastors have become CEOs rather than exegetes. Love and obedience cannot be substituted for doctrine; rather, they should be the expression and demonstration of it. Wells calls for a "return to biblical truth – not only to its content, but to the very concept of truth." He lumps postmodernists with ancient pagans in saying that for both of them, there are no absolute morals, and truth is found in one's own private experience. For evangelicals, though, truth is found only outside of one's experience in the pages of scripture. True knowledge is objective and is never dependent on the knower. However, the postmodern would claim that Wells' view of Christianity is based on his modernist (objectivist) presuppositions. In addition, Wells places a strong emphasis on the importance of the (historical) church community for theology, which sounds much like the postmodernist emphasis on community-based truth rather than individually known truth.

The second evangelical that Erickson looks at is Thomas Oden, a professor of theology at Drew University. Oden has an extensive resume that includes past involvement in ecumenism, the Civil Rights movement, pacifism, Marxism, the ACLU, the women's rights movement, the pro-choice movement, and astrology. Somehow he has returned to evangelicalism and now writes and teaches from a broad background of experience. His philosophy is almost as interesting and difficult to follow as his life. Oden first of all criticizes modernism's moral relativism, with its view that one must not impose one's opinions or moral convictions on others. He also targets modernism's "chronological chauvinism," with its view that anything new is better than anything old. For instance, the words new, innovative, and change are considered intrinsically good, while the words obsolete and bygone are considered bad. He decries modernism's naturalistic reductionism – the tendency to reduce all explanations to natural causes, and to exclude by assumption anything supernatural. Oden believes that the consequences of modernism have brought about its own demise. He points to such examples as Aushwitz, Hustler magazine, crime and suicide rates, and 300,000 cocaine babies per year as evidence of modernism's failure. Rather than analyzing postmodernism in its current state, Oden sees an opportunity for the church to seize the initiative and help determine what form postmodernism will take. He looks for a more critical look at Biblical criticism, with its speculative search for hidden layers of meaning in the Biblical text. He challenges the view that there is a difference between the historical Jesus and the person proclaimed by the church. And he calls for a return not to fundamentalism, but to the classical orthodoxy that characterized the church during its first millenium.

Erickson also examines Francis Schaeffer, who was combating postmodernism in the 1960s and 1970s before it was even known by that name. Schaeffer refuses to compromise Christianity by accomodating it to postmodernism. He believes that prior to about 1940, everyone worked with the Christian presupposition that there are absolutes, including moral absolutes. If something was true, then its opposite was false; if something was right, then its opposite was wrong. Schaeffer says that the shift away from this view began with the German philosopher Georg Hegel, who advocated a synthesis of opposites. The trend spread in three ways. First, it began in philosophy and spread to music, art, literature, science, engineering, and eventually theology. Second, it began in Germany, spread throughout Europe, and finally reached America. Third, it began with intellectuals, spread to the educated, and finally reached the upper middle class. Schaeffer sees homosexuality as a result of this philosophy due to its denial of the antithesis between male and female. Schaeffer is not a specialist in any of the areas he deals with, but he has a wide perspective and sees the interconnection between scientific fields, theology, and the rest of culture. His primary attack against postmodernism is that humans cannot live consistently with the implications of their abandonment of absolutes. This is partly due to the fact that man has been created in the image of God, which includes rationality. For instance, John Cage composed music by choosing random notes. This was an expression of a philosophy in which there is no underlying truth tying together various aspects of life. At one point Cage became interested in mushrooms. He realized that if he incorrectly identified a mushroom and ate it, he might die. So he chose not to approach mushrooms in the spirit of his philosophy of chance operations. He was unable to live consistently with the presuppositions of his philosophy. Schaeffer is ultimately an evangelist, and his strategy involves pushing a person toward a consistent living out of their presuppositions. When the person comes face to face with the tension between life and postmodern denial of rationality, they may be willing to accept the biblical solution. This is similar to the evangelistic strategy of talking about sin and hell before talking about salvation.

Erickson next looks at Stanley Grenz, a theologian who urges evangelicals to revise their theology in light of postmodernism. Grenz views postmodernism as a beneficial move away from the (incorrect) Enlightenment assumptions that knowledge is certain, knowledge is objective, and knowledge is good. Grenz does not go all the way with postmodernism's tenets; for example, he does believe that objective truth exists. He does agree with postmodernism, however, in some areas. For instance, he agrees that there are methods of reaching truth other than reason (such as the Holy Spirit, emotion, and intuition). Grenz takes a cautious and distrustful view of human reason. He criticizes the view that knowledge is always good and objective, recognizing that it can be used for either good or evil, and recognizing that we interpret data subjectively from within the framework of our culture and biases. He emphasizes the importance of individual conversion and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but he views truth as more of a community effort than an individual effort. Grenz calls for evangelicalism to move away from an emphasis on doctrine and toward emphases on the new birth, relationships, and the story of the gospel. He believes that theology must not become a cool and calculating dissection of God, but must rather make room for the concept of "mystery" as a reminder of the transendance of God.

Erickson next examines J. Richard Middleton and Brian J. Walsh, authors of Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age. Though not in total agreement with postmodernism, they do agree with it in rejecting what John Dewey lists as the four major characteristics of modernity: a preoccupation with the natural, a rejection of any call for submission to church authority, a belief in progress, and a reliance on the scientific method. Middleton and Walsh tell a joke about three umpires' discussion of balls and strikes. The first umpire, a modernist, says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and I call 'em the way they are." The second umpire, a postmodernist, says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and they ain't nothin' until I call 'em." The third umpire, with whom Middleton and Walsh agree, says, "There's balls and there's strikes, and I call 'em as I seem 'em." In other words, they do not deny the existence of objective truth, but they do deny our ability to know that truth objectively. They criticize the modernist's claim to know objective truth because it leads to an unbiblical control or destruction of those who disagree. They also criticize the modernist use of metanarratives – grand, universal, all-encompassing views of history. A secular modernist's metanarrative might be the belief in progress, while a Christian modernist's metanarrative might be the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Middleton and Walsh agree with postmodernism's claim that a metanarrative, like the idea of objective knowledge, leads to oppression. However, instead of rejecting the biblical metanarrative, they want to reformulate it in a way that prevents the oppression of others. They note that the Torah begins with creation, an indication that God's purposes extend to all people. The Torah ends with the people outside of the promised land, an indication that God loves those who are in exile. They point to Jesus as repeatedly siding with those who were traditionally oppressed. Middleton and Walsh disagree with the modernist reduction of Christianity to an objective systematic theology, and instead view Christianity as a total matter of life. The modern way of viewing the Bible is to look for timeless truths, but Middleton and Walsh rather view the Bible as primarily narrative in nature. They call for Christians not to apply Scripture, because that assumes that we can stand outside the Christian faith and our contemporary situation in order to correlate the two. This modernist conception fails to realize that there is no neutral ground on which to stand in order to accomplish such a task. They rather call for Christians to live out the biblical story, to continue the drama, and to contribute to the plot resolution "in a future that is genuinely unscripted."

The final author that Erickson examines is B. Keith Putt, a professor of philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Putt compares life to navigating on the sea by stars. Modernism not only navigates by the stars, but thinks that it can actually reach them. Postmodernism navigates by the stars, but recognizes that they are unattainable and that they may even be misleading. Putt is postmodernist in his strong aversion to the systematization and objectivity of truth, and emphasizes that knowledge must be consistent with experience. He is deconstructionist in that he believes that there can be no objective or absolute knowledge of the meaning of language, including the text of the Bible. Biblical interpretations can be meaningful and true, but they are not total. This results in a hermeneutic of suspicion, where exegetical perspectives are constantly questioned. If we recognize our presuppositions, we might be able to avoid eisegesis when we interpret the Bible. Putt opposes the arrogance that claims to have the one, single, correct Biblical interpretation. Modernism claims to know objective truth and thus always excludes someone, some contrary voice. It vainly tries to tie up all loose ends into a complete system, seeking power beyond what it has. Putt sees Jesus as our postmodernist example in this area. Jesus deconstructed the thought systems prevalent in first-century Israel, tearing down the idols of their closed systems. Putt's view of God is theopassionist – that is, he emphasizes the idea of divine suffering. This makes God more postmodernist and relational, rather than modernist and rational. God is not timeless or unchangeable; he must be temporal because loving and suffering are dynamic acts. Putt believes that Christ's death and resurrection somehow save humanity, but he denies the idea that salvation is due to Christ's payment of the debt of sinners.

Erickson concludes his book with an interesting discussion of evangelism in a postmodern world. Should we modify our theology in order to reach the postmodernist? Or should we keep a rational (modernist) theology and speak postmodernly, for example, using narratives rather than propositions? (This might be something like putting old wine in new wineskins.) Should we realize that the unsaved are not really postmodern (since they cannot live according to the basis of its presuppositions) and just proceed with our evangelism as usual? Or must we first cause the unsaved to see the error of postmodernism before we can reach them with modernistic evangelism? Should we combat postmodernism as part of our evangelistic efforts, or accept its presence and work within its parameters?

Postmodernizing the Faith is not an easy read, but it is a clear, concise, and generally unbiased view of the relationship between postmodernism and Christianity. Erickson gives his own opinion (which is mostly anti-postmodern) in a nondogmatic way, and he does a good job of presenting the views of others fairly and acknowledging their strong points. He shows that postmodernism (like most philosophies) is not an all-or-nothing proposition. There are degrees of postmodernism, and one may accept some of its points while rejecting others. Evangelicals have too often responded to postmodernism with the same knee-jerk reaction that fundamentalists react to evolution. Erickson makes it clear that postmodernism deserves more thought than that from the Christian church. I recommend this book to anyone seeking an introduction to postmodernism from a Christian viewpoint and a sampling of evangelical responses to it.

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Last Revised: March 13, 2001