50 a Requiem for Postmodernism

A Requiem for Postmodernism— Whither Now? James Parker, III James Parker, III has been Profes- The Certain Doom of “neoconservatives” (see further below). sor and Associate Dean of Worldview Postmodernism Second, the simple reason why and Culture at The Southern Baptist Postmodernism is highly overrated.1 postmodernism’s days are numbered is Theological Seminary since 1999. He While one theologian after another is that it commits epistemological suicide. has been on the faculty of several insti- rushing to turn out books and articles Postmodernism holds to the premise that tutions including Criswell College, Dal- about some aspect or implication about truth is a “social construct” and “truth” is las Baptist University, Eastern Baptist “the end of modernism” and “the impli- whatever your colleagues let you get by Theological Seminary, and Southeast- cations of postmodernism,” I assert that with.4 If that is the case, then postmodern ern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is postmodernism is overrated and predict thought is also just another social con- the Director of The Trinity Institute, a that it will come to a certain and perhaps struct and has neither universal nor nor- Christian study center and think tank soon demise, or at least will be relegated mative force. Therefore there is no reason that specializes in reaching those in the to the realm of “curious but passé.” that I or anyone else should be compelled academic world, and he also serves as First of all, modernism (which holds to let it be a normative criterion to shape the editor of FOUNDATIONS, a journal that reason is autonomous and that sci- and determine my beliefs. And if one takes for theological students. entific truth is normative and universal, their idea of “the hermeneutics of suspi- and which propounds amelioristic opti- cion” seriously, then there is every reason mism and proud confidence in technologi- to believe that their whole academic cal fixes), while not the only worldview, exercise is simply a thinly veiled disguise is still alive and well at the educational to get political power over anyone who and cultural shaping institutions of west- holds a view different than their own.5 ern Europe and North America. In speak- Particularly since they have shown their ing recently with graduate students at two hand, I will not be taken in by their major Ivy League research universities in verbal con game. Most simply stated, North America, the Ph.D. students said postmodernism is guilty of being self- that while one did certainly find post- referentially absurd. When one has given modern thought on the campuses up the idea of normative, universal and (particularly in English and related absolute truth, there is no reason whatso- departments), the intellectual culture of ever to take what they say as true (par- the university was still predominantly ticularly since they have conceded up modern.2 They frankly said that they front that “truth” does not even exist). basically ignored postmodernism.3 One There have been several excellent only has to skim the university press critiques of postmodern thought from an catalogues to find out that modernism is evangelical Christian and solid philo- alive and well. Ironically Foucault, sophical perspective.6 This paper will Derrida, and other French postmodernist not add to those critiques. It commends thinkers have been passé in France for a those who have resisted reshaping theol- good while, substituted by a generation ogy to conform to yet another outside of younger scholars one can only call philosophical influence. The study of his- 50 torical theology is often a study of how postmodernism (including some evan- theology has been shaped and conformed gelicals), one would get the impression (if to alien ideologies and philosophies that one did not know better) that reason, have had the effect of neutering the basic along with its attendant inferences of the content of historic orthodox Christian the- reality of objective truth and the legiti- ology. Sometimes Christian thought needs macy of a rational defense of the faith, is to challenge and contest philosophy, not the illegitimate child of the Enlighten- conform to its demands. Process theology ment. Several have indeed suggested the is a perfect example of a philosophy to abandonment of apologetics and the natu- which theology has been conformed. ral theology project. While most evan- Let’s take process theology as an gelicals enamoured with postmodernism example. Here is a philosophy that rarely say that they do not want to give up the lives in philosophy departments, except “metanarrative” truth claims of the Chris- as a relic in the history of philosophy tian faith, they do think that a rational division, since its credibility as a philo- defense of the faith is not a legitimate area sophical system has been fundamentally to which Christians should give attention. rejected. Yet it lives on as a parasite in the- What the church needs, it is said, is not ology departments. The same may well apologetics or the rational defense of the be the destiny for “postmodern thought.” faith,9 but a loving and caring Christian Solid work has demonstrated the defi- community (for that is a postmodern ciency of the thought of those evangelicals priority). No doubt it is of the highest all too ready to reshape doctrine and their priority for the church to be a caring and agenda to conform to some of the major loving body (this is not just postmodern; tenets of postmodernism. The common this is simply biblical). One cannot avoid fundamental error of such scholars is in the following embarrassing question, making the false assumption that the however: How do we adjudicate between evangelical scholarly approaches they conflicting truth claims (religious or oth- criticize have “sold out” to modernism.7 erwise)? Moonies or Mormons may well The great irony is that Carl F. H. Henry is have equally caring communities with often singled out as the most egregious Christians. Then what? Like it or not, if example of an evangelical whose system one is going to make a truth claim for the is determined (or undermined?) by mod- Christian faith, reason and the testing of ernism. Henry, in his great six volume truth claims will play a significant role in work God, Revelation and Authority, has the process. been one of the severest critics of the Enlightenment’s view of the sufficiency of The Coming Transmodern Period? autonomous human reason unaided by Since both moderism and postmod- revelation, has fundamentally decried the ernism have been dealt with substantively naïveté of secular humanism’s ameli- and, in this writer’s opinion, adequately, oristic optimism and would categorically the question we shall examine is not from deny that science is savior.8 He also knows whence the culture has come or where it that human reason and the laws of logic is (premodern, modern, postmodern), but were not an invention of the Enlighten- whither shall it go. Paul Vitz has sug- ment. When one reads certain writers on gested that it is time for conferences on 51 “The Death of Postmod-ernism.” He sees virtually every major orchestra in the indicators of a new transition in culture USA),13 are minimalists with an Eastern on the horizon that he calls the coming spiritual bent, there is a virtual wave of transmodern period. By transmodern, he non-pop musicians who are influenced by means “something that transforms mod- explicit classical Trinitarian Theism. This ernism, something that transcends it and is a sign of a change in the wind. moves beyond it. In doing this, it certainly When a classical album rises to Num- does not reject all things modern, and thus ber 6 on the British charts right behind it is far from a reactionary vision of Paul McCartney (Gramophone’s “Best-sell- the future.”10 Trans-modernism would ing CD in 1993”), prompts a review by indeed constitute a rejection of both the Rolling Stone magazine, and is introduced overreaching claims of modernism and into mainstream retailers like Sound the nihilistic absurdity of postmodernism, Warehouse so that the CD is found on the while benefiting from positive contribu- checkout counter in Muleshoe, Texas, tions of both. Is there evidence for “the even the most casual cultural observer birth of this new ideal of hope, of wisdom, begins to notice that there’s a disturbance of virtue and the good, of beauty and har- in the cultural force. Such was the case at mony, … the resurrection of classicism and the 1992 release of Catholic and Polish other pre-modern concepts in the differ- composer Henryk Gorecki’s Third Sym- ent arts and the intellectual life itself”?11 phony. Gorecki has been associated with Indicators of the quiet dawning of this the avant-garde wing of contemporary new vision are discernable from several classical music. The Third Symphony was segments of our culture, including music, composed in 1976 and the title is “Sym- architecture, the visual arts, poetry, litera- phony of Sorrowful Songs.” ture, and the core of intellectual tradition, He grew up in the Polish town of including philosophy and moral theory. Katowice, an unknown town except for While it is too soon to identify a move- its neighbor—Oswiecim, called Auschwitz ment (even as it is difficult to identify a in German. The texts of the three move- postmodern “movement”), there are com- ments that drive the symphony are (1) a mon characteristics and a shared vision lamentation of 15th century monks; (2) a that appears to be emerging at varied, prayer by a teenager imprisoned by the unexpected, and non-coordinated places. Gestapo written on a wall where she tries to find the good out of her dire circum- Transmodernism in Music? stances; and (3) the demanding question In music, an alternative to John Cage’s of a mother who asks, “Why did you kill music of irrationality and chance is my son?” While the work is appropriately appearing: a music that is informed from titled sorrowful, it nevertheless clings to beyond modernistic or postmodern natu- vestiges of hope in the face of despair.

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