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POST / LATE-MODERNITY AS THE CONTEXT FOR CHRISTIAN SCHOLARSHIP TODAY

Epistemology

Postmodernity has raised all sorts of questions about our capacity to know and how we know and whether we can accurately represent reality—i.e., about epistemology. The possibility of universal objective knowledge is considered by many to be impossible. Much postmodern theory is strongly antirealist and considers all knowledge to be local, communal, and a human construct. Such epistemological skepticism is captured very clearly in Lyotard’s notion of "incredulity towards metanarratives." The corollary of this skepticism has been a profound suspicion of the hidden agendas of "neutral" modern knowledge; what claimed to be objective and value free has come to be seen as a mask for powerful ideologies. The consequence of this skepticism is an awareness of inevitable pluralism in knowledge and consequent fragmentation. Certainty and truth are regarded by many with great suspicion. Paradoxically the one thing that radical postmodern thinkers seem quite sure of is that there are no metanarratives! There is widespread disagreement about the role of rationality and whether or not knowledge can be grounded. Some, like Norris, Habermas, and Gellner seek to reconstruct the project of modernity. Others would seek a genuinely postmodern position in which rationality is always perspectival. Others like MacIntyre seek to do justice to the perspectival nature of rationality while holding on to more universal perspectives. 

Ontology

Epistemology is closely related to ontology and here too postmodernity has undermined the broad consensus of modernity. One would expect that incredulity towards metanarratives would leave little room for much ontological reflection but of course this is unavoidable. All philosophical analysis inevitably carries with it ontological presuppositions whether conscious or not. A common ontological presupposition in postmodern theory is that language is the most fundamental aspect of reality. Derrida is a good example of this view. Much postmodern theory has little room for any notion of an order in reality existing apart from human construction. Skepticism about human knowing goes hand in hand with a high view of the human community as constructing the worlds in which we live. This too reflects a particular ontology. 

Anthropology

Epistemology and ontology are inseparable from anthropology in the sense of the nature of humankind. The rationalistic autonomous view of the human that was so dominant in modernity has been undermined and a plurality of alternatives proposed. 

Rorty, for example, suggests that we should think of the moral self as "a network of beliefs, desires, and emotions with nothing behind it—no substrate behind the attributes. For purposes of moral and political deliberation and conversation, a person just is that network" ("Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism," Journal of Philosophy 80 [1983] 585-86). For Foucault the human person is "no more than a kind of rift in the order of things, or, in any case, a configuration whose outlines are determined by the new position he has so recently taken up in the field of knowledge ... man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, ... that will disappear as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form" (M. Foucault, The Order of Things [Vintage, 1973] xxiii). In several postmodern thinkers Freud’s anthropology has been revised and renewed (e.g., Baudrillard, Deleuze, Gittari, Lacan). If thinkers like Baudrillard play down the possibility of the human subject acting in any significant way others stress the possibility of human self-creation. 

Epistemology, ontology, anthropology. That so much postmodern theorizing is related to these areas indicates the extent to which the philosophical foundations of modernity are in crisis. In many respects postmodernity is the name we give to this foundational crisis, which N. Smith captures poignantly when he writes, "The Enlightenment is dead, Marxism is dead, the working class movement is dead ... and the author does not feel so well either" (cited in D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity [Blackwell, 1989] 325). Postmodernity is characterized by pluralism, uncertainty, instability, and fragmentation. The old certainties seem to have gone with no unified vision to replace them even as capitalism hurtles on into a revolutionary information phase. 

However, it seems to me better to refer to what is being called postmodernity as late or high modernity. Harvey suggests that modernity is characterized by a rejection of tradition and embrace of change, as well as confidence in reason to lead to new certain truths. The capacity of reason to do this has been undermined so that we are left with change, flux, and instability. Such an analysis helpfully alerts us to the fact that the roots of modernity have been called into question but they have not all been abandoned. Human autonomy, for example, tends to remain as firmly entrenched as ever, the difference being that we now perhaps have to learn to live with, or even perhaps celebrate the uncertainties and limitations. Mary Hesse alerts us to the lingering legacy of modernity in the postmodern debate when she writes, "The liberal consensus has so successfully established itself as the ideology of Western intellectual culture, that it has become almost invisible as the presupposition of every postmodern debate" ("How to Be Postmodern without Being a Feminist," The Monist [1994] 457). And it ought not to be forgotten that the nihilistic and relativistic side of postmodern theory is only one aspect of the contemporary situation. Chris Norris detects something of a reaction to the extremes of postmodernism among some of its proponents, namely Said and Kristeva, and he himself has undertaken a major project aimed at rehabilitating a form of realism (Truth and the Ethics of Criticism [Manchester University, 1994]). 

Certainly if modernity is a reaction to and immanentizing of a Christian worldview, then postmodernity shows little sign of openness to recovering Christian perspectives on reality. David Lyon does say that "today, the human is being displaced, decentred, and the grip on the future seems once more up for grabs. While this opens the door for everything from Foucault’s play of power to the Age of Aquarius, it also renders more possible the possibility that Providence was not such a bad idea after all. Perhaps postmodern apocalyptics will have to make space for a vision of a (re)new(ed) earth, that antique agent of social change, and the original partner of final judgement" (Postmodernity [Open University, 1994] 86). And J. Milbank has argued that only Christian theology provides an alternative route to contemporary nihilism. However, these voices are in the minority (Theology and Social Theory [Blackwell, 1990]). 

The Postmodern Turn and Christian Scholarship 

The complexity and comprehensive nature of the challenge of postmodernity will be obvious from the above. The postmodern debate raises a myriad of issues that Christians need to address and wrestle with. In this concluding section my limited aim is to articulate the challenge that the postmodern turn presents to Christians to produce integrally Christian scholarship. 

The danger of the postmodern turn, at least philosophically, is relativism and the loss of any notion of "true truth." The plus, in my view, is its undermining of the myth of neutrality so central to modernity and the reopening of discussion about foundations. Christians have always had the resources to recognize that scholarship is never neutral but is always shaped by the religious presuppositions and worldview of the academic involved (see R. Clouser, The Myth of Religious Neutrality [University of Notre Dame, 1991]). However, such has been the dominance of modernity with its myth of neutral, rational objectivity, that many Christians succumbed to the pressure of doing Christian scholarship beneath the Cartesian umbrella. The general tenets of modernity seemed so obvious that they tended to be taken for granted and assumed, rather than examined from a Christian perspective. These same tenets are now, however, being attacked from many sides. 

Certainly within academia, postmodernity provides us with an opportunity to rethink the foundational areas of epistemology, ontology, and anthropology, and to give an account of our presuppositions. A scientistic approach to reality which imposes an inductive method of fact-collecting upon disciplines cannot simply be assumed to be appropriate; if it is the desired approach, and I for one would not recommend it, then it will have to be argued for. The modern consensus has been loosened, at least philosophically. Thus, amidst contemporary scholarly pluralism, one needs to consider where one positions oneself philosophically and account for one’s position. 

For Christians this positively provides the impetus to explore the ontological, epistemological, and anthropological implications of a Christian perspective on reality. In short, the postmodern turn challenges Christians to produce integrally Christian scholarship, rather than scholarship which is an uncritical synthesis of different and conflicting perspectives upon reality. All theory construction carries with it philosophical presuppositions, and Christians need to ensure that this is in line with the gospel in their academic labors. The postmodern turn provides the gap, as it were, for Christians to hear the call to scholarship coram Deo once again. 

And of course this applies to Christians in all disciplines, and not just theology. The foundational philosophic crisis of postmodernity is being felt all over the academy, thereby reminding us that integrally Christian scholarship is required in all disciplines. In his exhilarating The New Testament and the People of God, N.T. Wright has given us a taste of how attention to the foundations can positively reshape a discipline (Fortress, 1992). I suggest that for Christians in academia the postmodern turn presents the challenge and opportunity to do this type of work in all disciplines: reexamine the foundations and find a way of constructing an integrally Christian edifice in that area while remaining deeply in dialogue with contemporary proponents of the discipline. Such labor would do much to reduce the "scandal of the Evangelical mind" (see M. Knoll’s excellent book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind [Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1994]). 

The fact is that important shifts are taking place and, whatever our precise interpretation of postmodernity, as D. Lyon says, "The concept of postmodernity is a valuable ‘problematic’ that alerts us to key questions concerning contemporary social changes. I see it," he says, "as a concept that invites participation in a debate over the nature and direction of present-day societies, in a globalized context, rather than one describing an already existing state of affairs....The important thing is to understand what is happening..." (84-85). "Postmodernity" as a concept certainly invites Christians to examine closely the nature and direction of their academic endeavors. 

A Reader’s Guide to (Some) Christian Texts on Postmodernity 

The literature on postmodernity is constantly expanding. As a help for readers wanting to get into this discussion and to develop a Christian perspective on postmodernity here is a short list of relevant books. The * indicates the titles I would suggest starting with. 

*D. Lyon, Postmodernity (Open University, 1994): Lyon is a Christian sociologist in Canada. The best introductory text on postmodernity. Only 104 pages but lucid and packed with information. 

T.C. Oden, *After Modernity...What? Agenda for Theology (Zondervan, 1990); Two Worlds: Notes on the Death of Modernity in America and Russia (InterVarsity, 1992); Requiem: A Lament in Three Movements (Abingdon, 1995): Oden has returned from the theological wastelands of modernity to (re)discover evangelical orthodoxy. His recent works are as a result fresh and vital, with a keen sense of where the battlelines are. Although I think Oden has too quickly pronounced modernity dead, the feast of his writings should not be missed. 

P. Sampson, V. Samuel, and C. Sugden, eds., Faith and Modernity (Regnum, 1994): A useful collection of essays by evangelicals covering a variety of aspects of modernity and postmodernity. 

*D. Wells, God in the Wasteland: The Reality of Truth in a World of Fading Dreams (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1994): A superb and moving text which leaves one with a strong sense of the relevance of the sovereign God for our times. 

R. Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World (Wm.B. Eerdmans, 1993): Superb! Lundin takes account of contemporary culture by exploring the historical background to some of its central beliefs and considering the implications of these. He starts with a look at current developments in education and the university, and then focuses specifically on two nineteenth-century American authors, Emerson and Hawthorne. Subsequent chapters deal with Marxism and post-structuralism, and the implications of the culture of interpretation for Christian faith. 

B. Walsh and R. Middleton, Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age (SPCK, 1995): A thorough and creative text from the authors of the very useful book, The Transforming Vision. I would however be cautious about their particular narrative proposal with respect to the authority of Scripture. 

C.E. Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge University, 1993): A thorough theological diagnosis of the condition of modernity with proposals for a theological remedy along trinitarian lines. Highly recommended! 

A.C. Thiselton, Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self (T. & T. Clark, 1995): Thiselton responds to the serious challenge that the postmodern turn presents to Christian theology, and pays particular attention to understandings of the "self" and its relationship to society. This important book contains a particularly useful analysis and critique of D. Cupitt’s theological development against the background of modernity and postmodernity (Part III). 

B.D. Ingraffia, Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology (Cambridge University, 1995): In this penetrating text, Ingraffia explores the postmodern opposition to theology evidenced in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida and argues that they all critique the ontotheology that resulted from the Hellenization of biblical theology. Christian thinkers ought not to follow postmodern theory, according to Ingraffia, but should reverse the ontotheological route by recovering a theology of the cross, and developing Christian critical theory that is built on revelation and guided by a hermeneutics of faith. 

By Craig Bartholomew, postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for the Study of Religion, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education.