David says:

Justin,
I thought (for just a moment) of using the Postmodern Generator” to write my term paper, but alas, they’re not long enough. Since, in postmodern thought, parody is equivalent to original thought, that it would make the perfect statement.

Justin, if I could, how do you see postmodernism incorporated into Christianity? Or do you see Christianity trying to “appear” postmodern? What postmodern concepts do you feel that the church should embrace?

My response (which I hope you will comment on and expand):

I’m pretty busy with Danforth right now, but I can offer a few thoughts. Postmodernism as you are describing it was explored by a few writers and philosphers decades ago, but does not currently resemble that at all.

Postmodernism is not a set of ideas or concepts; it is a set of assumptions about the world, just as modernism is. Its main assumptions, in the less-extreme form that people actually believe:

• Modernism was loaded with arrogance, especially the idea that we could know everything and obtain total mastery of the world and human existence if we studied it objectively enough.
• Total objectivity is impossible for mortals like us; we see from a particular vantage point, and don’t know what we don’t know or how our thinking and perception are distorted.
• Our perceptions and thinking are shaped heavily by our experiences, including the shared experience of culture. Therefore, people from different cultures will necessarily have different ways of looking at the world, and no two people will see everything exactly the same way, even if they use the same words to describe their understanding.
• Humor and parody often illustrate great truths more succinctly and eloquently than propositional statements, though of course people might not agree on what the joke means.
• The modern worldview is based on Newtonian physics, which has been substantially revised by quantum physics. In particular, much of what we thought about things being separate and discreet has been proven wrong - the universe is much more tightly interconnected than we once thought.
• Truth is more a matter of coherence and interconnected meaning; people do not proceed rationally from logical foundations to their logical conclusions.
• The more concepts in one area reinforce and cohere with concepts in another area of our knowledge, the more clearly true the concepts probably are, though of course this is subject to revision as our network of knowledge grows.
• Power has been abused throughout history, and one form of power is truth-construction, knowledge-construction, explaining reality, or whatever you’d prefer to call it. Those who define the rules are often unaware that they are defining situations in ways that put others at a disadvantage.

Some implications for the church:

• Postmodern people do not view truth as a building with a foundation, and you cannot convince someone of a concept simply by starting with a foundation they agree with and proceeding rationally. Yes, the NT uses the metaphor of the church as a building with Jesus as the cornerstone, but it’s a metaphor, and it’s not referring to truth, but the church itself. People need to see that what they are hearing is coherent with what they know about the world and life; selling them an isolated set of truths will not work.
• The church has too much power, and is therefore suspect, in the eyes of most people.
• Christians cannot preach good news if they are not also good people; inauthenticity is not merely bothersome, but completely invalidates the message.
• The bible is meant to be interpreted in community, not individually.

That’s about all I can come up with now; I need to get to my 70 pages of reading before tomorrow :). Perhaps commenters on the blog can be of additional help.