|
|
| From | Message | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
 A Postmodern ChristianityThe instantiation of postmodern preferences has had varying effects on ecclesial communities, and has even given rise to new religious groups. Due to the absence of a Magisterium, the Protestant mainline has been greatly weakened, and the religious culture of the United States profoundly changed, by postmodern influences. New groups have also emerged that explicitly appeal to the postmodern mind, such as the so-called “Emerging Church.” With the formation of the Unitarian Universalist Church in 1961, the postmodern project finds an even more profound realization. Finally, one encounters the most extreme instantiation of the postmodern preferences in the pensiero debole (weak thought) and teologia debole (weak theology) of the Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo. Nonetheless, whatever the approach may be, any endeavor to marry the postmodern preferences to Christianity will be deleterious to encountering the central message of the Gospel summed up in the ancient acronym: ΙΧΘΥΣ—Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior 1—“for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12 RSV) The Postmodern Project Postmodernity is not simply a philosophical movement that follows modernism, but rather is a reaction to it. The Italian archbishop and theologian, Bruno Forte, offers the insightful metaphor of light and darkness: “The night is that which follows the setting of the light. If the light is the metaphor of the modern spirit, the night is the metaphor of postmodernity, that is, of this time in which the strong reason of modernity is rediscovered as a weak, uncertain, and restless reason. The night is a time of shipwrecks.” 2 Archbishop Forte draws from a commentary by the German philosopher, Hans Blumemberg, on the work of the ancient Roman writer, Lucretius, entitled De Rerum Natura. According to Blumemberg, the Epicurian mentality of ancient Rome could be understood in the story of a spectator who observes a shipwreck. While he is filled with terror witnessing the disaster, he takes consolation in the fact that his feet are firmly rooted on the land. He might have the thought, “Poor fellow…well…at least it isn’t me.” The postmodern man though finds himself on the sinking ship. He must seek to gather the remaining pieces of the ship and build another boat in order to survive. In the darkness, in the midst of the shipwreck of contemporary thought, “that which is put in crisis is not so much ‘meaning’ (senso), but the quest (ricerca 3) for meaning.” 4 The struggle with modernity was the quest for hope and meaning in a world dominated by cold reason and calculation. However, in the “great drama” of the night of postmodernism, one must confront an attitude of indifference in which everything is “dim, ephemeral, fleeting….The crisis of postmodernity is, in sum, the loss of the taste of seeking the meaning to live and to die.” 5 The conditions for the emergence of postmodernism can be traced back to the existentialism of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, as well as the atheism and nihilism of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. While modernism fell into the error of asserting that “being” is posited by cognitive consciousness, postmodernism suggests that any subjective foundation which is achieved can be the object of a more radical deconstruction. Therefore, the modernist foundation of cognitive consciousness may be further resolved into social praxis, history, literary criticism, language, or aesthetics. In opposition to modernist humanists who focused on man’s consciousness and free will as the source of his thought and action, the human subject itself is deconstructed by postmoderns and no longer the receiver of meaning or a being of central importance Postmodern thinkers suggest that the unconscious mind is the dominant force in man, and that consciousness is severely constrained by the constructs of human language with which man attempts to “create reality.” It is not surprising then that this radical deconstruction creates hostility to any truth that is “suspiciously” given without the receiving subject assigning it meaning. This phenomenon is referred to as postmodern paranoia, and ultimately fosters a loss of the human subject—the “death of man.” While Nietzsche intended the “death of God” to be an impetus for man to rise up and be the one who proclaims what is good and what is evil, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault devalued this “victory” when they radicalized this concept even further by proclaiming the “death of man.” The American philosopher, Joseph Rice, brilliantly captures the distressing consequence of this death: “Even if we trans-value all values, we do it within a culture centered on man. If man is dead, there is no cultural center, and it is possible to overturn the very idea of culture itself.” 6 In his commentary on Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, the Baptist theologian and literature scholar, Ralph C. Wood, points out that: Chesterton rightly discerned that Nietzsche was the ultimate exemplar of the turn to the subject that began with Kant—indeed, that he would be the philosophical father of the postmodern and irrationalist century to come. Though in 1908, Nietzsche had just recently been translated into English, Chesterton saw immediately that he would inaugurate the triumph of will over reason. With remarkable acuity, Chesterton goes to the heart of the matter: “Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not reason. The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it … They say choice itself is the divine thing.” Whereas the real was once the rational, it is now the chosen and the felt. 7 {emphasis added} While the medieval philosophers began their ricerche with metaphysics, i.e., speculative access to being, and modernist thinkers gave priority to ethics, i.e., practical access to meaning, the postmodernist believes that aesthetics is foundational. Through emphasizing “style,” postmodernism denies meaning as part of its flight from truth. Postmodernism also gives emphasis to conflict as a positive value. This is in stark contrast to Aristotelian philosophy, which sees contradiction as a dead end. Postmodern philosophy goes beyond the Hegelian Dialectic to make conflict a first principle. “Ultimate resolution is not the goal.” 8 In this spirit, postmodern thinkers also express a disbelief and rejection of grand narratives. As Wood points out: If objectivist reason gone mad is the perfect description of modernity, the subjectivist denial of reason is the dementia of postmodernity. François Lyotard famously defined postmodernism as the suspicion of all meta-narratives: of all totalizing and exhaustive explanations, whether in the Copernican and Newtonian science of the Enlightenment, or in the Christian creeds that narrate the story of the entire cosmos. 9 The modernist grand narratives of the triumph of science and engineering, as well as the spread of democracy and liberty, were not taken seriously. Suspicion and disbelief filled the void, and interdisciplinary research possibilities and systematic knowledge were deemed impossible: The central postmodernist premise is that multiple viewpoints and multiple interests enlarge our comprehension of the finally incomprehensible universe, whereas a singular and definitive perspective denies this irreducible multiplicity of viewpoints. As with rationalist modernism, so with irrationalist postmodernism: There is much truth in it. All our seeing is indeed subjective and culture-bound. We behold the world through the lenses of our own conceptions and assumptions. All truth is filtered and sieved, all understanding rooted in time and place and community. There is no view from nowhere, no godlike perch from which we can view the world neutrally—as if it were God’s own view. But from the valid premise that there is no such thing as naked knowledge, postmodern relativists and emotivists reach invalid conclusions. They hold that we can make no comparative moral judgments, engage in no time-transcending religious arguments, allow no privileging of certain cultures—for example, cultures that dignify women over cultures that demean them, or even governments that enhance democratic freedoms over those that destroy them. 10 {emphasis added} The Roman Catholic theologian, the Rev. Isaías Díez del Río, O.S.A., identifies postmodern preferences, which perhaps, more than any other description, capture the essence of postmodern thought. Postmoderns prefer 11: The individual to the universal The psychological to the ideological Communication to communion Information to knowledge (truth) Diversity to homogeneity Permissiveness to coercion Multi-criteria to norms and dogma An eclectic approach to a systematic one What is vital and existential to what is logical and reasonable Opinion to ideas and thought Sentiments to reason Artisanship to art Aesthetics to ethics Syncretism to unity of belief Multiculturalism to culture Complete irrationalism to absolute rationalism What is particular to what is universal or cosmopolitan What is private and personal to what is public and social Egoism to solidarity Subjectivity to objectivity Personal impulses and instinctual feelings to objective norms and values Pleasure to asceticism and violence Options to obligations Frankness to secrecy Human needs to technological demands Multiplicity and difference to uniqueness and uniformity Micro to macro Minorities to majorities Local/concrete contexts to global contexts Marginal dissent to global consensus Micro-groups to macro-communities Emotional, sectarian communities to ecclesial communities Spontaneous leaders to legal or traditional leaders Personalism to authority “Deconstruction” of the inherited world to its affirmation “Decolonization” to colonization Multiculturalism to culture Complete irrationalism to absolute rationalism What is particular to what is universal or cosmopolitan What is private and personal to what is public and social Egoism to solidarity Subjectivity to objectivity Personal impulses and instinctual feelings to objective norms and values Pleasure to asceticism and violence Options to obligations Frankness to secrecy Human needs to technological demands Multiplicity and difference to uniqueness and uniformity Micro to macro Minorities to majorities Local/concrete contexts to global contexts Marginal dissent to global consensus Micro-groups to macro-communities Emotional, sectarian communities to ecclesial communities Spontaneous leaders to legal or traditional leaders Personalism to authority “Deconstruction” of the inherited world to its affirmation “Decolonization” to colonization The people, and ethnic groups, to the nation Adolescent immaturity to adult maturity Ambiguity to clarity and distinction What is weak to what is strong What is frivolous to what is serious What is ephemeral, unstable, and transitory, to what is firm, stable, and lasting Leisure and partying to work Consumerism to production |
||
|
Link address |
||
|
Why |
||
|
Why Though I may have some reservations regarding Roman Catholicism's orthodoxy, that hasn't any bearing regarding the problem of postmodern Christianity's heretics in the Church. |
||
|
Post Modern Christianity's Heretics How did the poor and working class become the enemies of God? I see Satan's fingerprints all over this, IHS. The handiwork of the devil. |
||
|
Citation When did locking kids in cages become a Christian value? Maybe for the Christians who wear "Gott Mit Uns" on their belt buckles and goose step to Groper's orders. Franklin identifies sin in congress as shutting down the government, which Groper now threatens to do if he cannot obtain funding for his vanity wall, which he promised again and again Mexico would pay for. Why is Graham leading his minions into perdition? |
||
|
Being is Consciousness That is not an error but a fact. Terry Schiavo died long before her heart stopped beating. While your typical Groper fawning evangelical may intellectually resemble someone taken in a permanent vegetative state superficially, they are still alive in any legitimate sense of the word. I was reading a fascinating article on death this evening, and wish I could post a link. But a human essence is contained within consciousness. Stip that away sand what remains is no longer human. Christians in ages past could justify surgery like prefrontal lobotomy on the grounds it was not murder. Laughable! I am pleased we live in more enlightened times, no thanks to those who would eagerly bring back water boarding or hanging women for witchcraft or caging immigrant kids. Kiddie Koncentration Kamps. Sad. #MAGA! Many Are Getting Arrested Groper in 2016: Hillary is corrupt because the FBI is investigating her. Groper in 2018: The FBI is corrupt because they are investigating me. |
