The word “postmodern” is heard lots, but what number of know what it really means?
Few, which is comprehensible. The way it’s used varies and may be confusing. It can discuss with latest ideas about gender, the fight between the powerful and the oppressed, obscure philosophical discussions, or modern art comparable to Tracy Emin’s bed. It’s often utilized in a way that basically just means, “younger individuals are very different nowadays, and I do not understand them.”
Taking time to know the concept might help older generations to speak with younger generations, address among the problems we have now in society at present, and explain why traditional ways of sharing the Christian faith are less effective than they was once.
Like many social movements, postmodern ideas began within the minds of philosophers comparable to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. The implications were subtle, and it wasn’t obvious where they’d lead. It became clearer through the work of twentieth Century academics comparable to Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault and Judith Butler.
If you have no idea who these individuals are or what they said, you are not alone. Postmodernists are known to provide tracts which are very difficult to read and understand.
Many people who find themselves postmodern in attitudes, beliefs and outlook are also unfamiliar with the philosophy. The trickle-down effect of ideas from academia to education, media and culture will not be all the time obvious. Many “postmodernists” are steeped in its ideas without knowing where they arrive from or what they are surely.
What is truth?
Pontius Pilate’s famous query in John 18:38 shows that postmodern ideas are lots older than the philosophers mentioned. Pilate’s query is at the guts of this radical movement, and its answer is, “whose truth?”. This is what’s often known as “relativist”. To the postmodern mind, there is no such thing as a “one” truth, only different ideas which are relative to one another. This is the inspiration of oft-heard statements comparable to “there is no such thing as a truth” or “that is true for you, that is true for me” or “finding my truth”.
Christian apologists have identified that the primary statement is not sensible. Saying “there is no such thing as a truth” is a truth claim, so it contradicts itself.
Indeed, many postmodern ideas, comparable to Butler’s belief that we will select our gender and ignore our biological sex, or Foucault’s understanding of the world as people groups competing for power, even have claims about truth and the way in which that the world is.
A key difference, and what really matters with regards to faith in God, is postmodernists say that beliefs are merely “constructed” – they do not reflect the world around us, or in the event that they do, we won’t know this of course. Before these ideas took hold, we’d have a look at an orange, think the word “orange” and see the color, and consider that these three things are entirely connected. Postmodern thought severed this relationship. The object orange is over there, and the concept “orange” is just in our heads.
Postmodernism’s effects
That might sound a bit strange and never very relevant to atypical life, but its implications are enormous. One vital consequence for believers is that these ideas inevitably result in human thought being placed on a pedestal, while diminishing the concept God or His existence may be known.
Dr Joshua Madden, in ‘What is truth? Evangelising the post-modern world’, writes, “Elevating man to the position wherein all reality relies inevitably (and directly) dethrones God, putting man in his place. This is, in fact, nothing but the most recent instantiation of the serpent’s ancient deceit: man must throw off the yoke of God as a way to be established as master of himself and change into as a god.”
But postmodern thought has much wider effects than religion. For example, if man is the centre of all things, the “self”, our feelings and our chosen “identity”, change into far more vital than they was once, as Dr Carl R Trueman has described.
By emphasising words and the motivations for using them somewhat than the target truth they represent, the manipulation of language becomes a political tool, and the words used for sensitive topics like sexuality, gender and race fastidiously regulated. Given that many postmodernists say they need to rescue the oppressed, a goal that almost all people support, such shifts in language are sometimes accepted. However, some argue that postmodernists themselves are in actual fact looking for power and control over others somewhat than liberating them.
Postmodern ideas bring cherished values comparable to free speech into query, as I’ve recently discussed.
The postmodern church
These philosophical ideas are complex so it’s comprehensible that almost all Christians find it difficult to understand their radical implications for faith today.
Many even embrace postmodernism, or at the very least an interpretation of it. There is “postmodern theology”, what was once called the “emerging church” but is now often called “deconstruction” – a postmodern word for questioning beliefs and traditions. Traditional or orthodox Christians consider that such movements inevitably result in a weakening or rejection of religion itself.
Yet theology students of a certain age were encouraged to embrace postmodernism since it allowed the Bible to be read and accepted as a narrative, without worrying an excessive amount of about its historical accuracy or truth. At that point, liberal theologians comparable to the “Jesus Seminar” had appeared to remove the very foundations of our faith by doubting the authenticity of the Bible through historical criticism. However, much work has gone into verifying its claims since then. There are good reasons to trust the Gospels.
Derrida explicitly criticised the “logocentrism” of Western culture, which he believed wrongly elevates the “logos” or a knowable connection between reality and words. Instead, he argued, words can only mean anything inside their context. Yet the logos is central to ancient Greek thought, and in fact, to Christianity: it’s the title of Jesus taken from John 1 best translated because the “Word”. It is intrinsic to Christianity to see meaning and reality to be connected and vital. So perhaps it will not be surprising that the rise in postmodernism has correlated with a decline in Christian belief?
Who should we trust?
The beginnings of postmodernism feature some villains worthy of a James Bond film plotting to destroy the world. For example, there are accusations that Foucault abused young boys. He, together with quite a lot of other “intellectuals” tried to remove age of consent laws in France within the Seventies, arguing that children can consent to sex. Rousseau abandoned his children to an orphanage. Heidegger supported the Nazis. Christian postmodern thinker John Howard Yoder was a serial abuser of ladies.
Perhaps they’d personal motivations for wanting to reject the concept objective truth and reality exists, especially of the moral kind?
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