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"Click on the endnote numbers to read endnotes; click on
"back" on your web browser to return to your place in the
article." CHAPTER 2 THE RISE
AND INFLUENCE OF POSTMODERNISM “Wither is God,” he [the
madman] cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him--you and I. All of
us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up
the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?...Are we not
straying through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breathe of an empty
space? ...Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too
decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we,
the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? ...I come too early,” he
said then; “my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its
way, still wandering--it has not yet reached the ears of man.”[1] The strangely prophetic words of Friedrich
Nietzsche, written over a hundred years ago, have now reached the “ears of
man.” In the words of James Sire, “The acknowledgment of the death of God is
the beginning of postmodern wisdom.”[2]
But the beginning of postmodern wisdom is the end of wisdom. Defining
postmodernism is difficult; to do so will require some background. Five major philosophical ontologies or
worldviews exist. Ontology answers the question: What is reality? Before the
modern era the three major ontologies were idealism, naturalism, and realism.
Proponents of these three ontologies believe that there is an essential
reality. That is, reality can be defined as to its essence and thus objective
truth exists. Idealists such as Plato, Augustine, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and
Brightman believed that the essence of reality is immaterial ideas, forms,
essences, that transcend the material world which is but a copy or a transient
shadow of the really real. Naturalists such as Thales, Hobbes, Newton, Marx,
and Sagan believed reality is defined by the natural, sensible world. Realists
such as Aristotle and Aquinas believed reality is both material (physical) and
immaterial (spiritual). The modern era witnessed the development of
the next two ontologies, pragmatism and existentialism, which believe that no
essential reality exists (more specifically that ontology is unnecessary and
misguided, respectively) and thus no objective truth. Pragmatists such as James
and Dewey believed that reality is what works in empirical (physical)
experience. Existentialists such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Sartre believed
that reality is chosen by the individual. That means, basically, that reality
is whatever the individual wants it to be. Individuals must create their own
meaning because life does not come with any meaning in itself. Premodern thought, governed largely by theism
(the worldview centered on God as defining reality), addressed what is there
(ontology). Modern thought, governed by Enlightenment naturalism, addressed how
to know what is there (epistemology). Postmodern thought, governed by
pragmatism and existentialism, addresses how language functions to construct
meaning itself. In other words, a shift has taken place in “first things” from
being to knowing to constructing meaning.[3] James Sire shed additional light on the shift
from premodern to modern to postmodern thinking: Two major shifts in
perspective have occurred over the past centuries: one is the move from the
“premodern” (characteristic of the Western world prior to the seventeenth
century) to the “modern” (beginning with Descartes [1596-1650]); the second is
the move from the “modern” to the “postmodern” (whose first major exponent was
Friedrich Nietzsche in the last quarter of the nineteenth century). Take the
following as an example of these shifts. . . . There has been a movement from
(1) a “premodern” concern for a just society based on revelation from a just
God to (2) a “modern” attempt to use universal reason as the guide to justice
to (3) a “postmodern” despair of any universal standard for justice. Society
then moves from medieval hierarchy to Enlightenment democracy to postmodern
anarchy.[4] Postmodernism has its roots in modernism
which began in the 1700s with the Enlightenment. Rene Descartes is seen as the
first modern philosopher. Gene Edward Veith observed, In
the 1700s the progress of science accelerated so rapidly that it seemed as if
science could explain everything. . . . This age of reason, scientific
discovery, and human autonomy is termed the Enlightenment. Its thinkers
embraced classicism with its order and rationality (although their version of
classicism neglected the supernaturalism of Plato and Aristotle). However, they
lumped Christianity together with paganism as outdated superstitions. Reason
alone, so they thought, may now replace the reliance on the supernatural born
out of the ignorance of ‘unenlightened’ times.[5] So with the Enlightenment man became the
center of the universe rather than God. The modern era left little or no
meaning in life. In order to overcome this Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
developed his philosophy of existentialism. He called for living by faith, not
reason. David Breese summarized, “He [Kierkegaard] had the problem of
involvement in dead religion. He went to the Danish Church in Denmark, a cold
brownstone place, but he wasn’t satisfied. So he began to think -- ‘Reality is not something outside ourselves.
Truth is not something objective. Reality is within ourselves. Reality is an
encounter, reality is involvement, reality, is what happens to you, and if it
doesn’t happen to you, forget it. It’s not true.’ He is what we call a
subjectivist, actually a super-subjectivist.”[6] On the heels of Kierkegaard came Friedrich
Nietzsche (1844-1900), the philosopher whose words began this chapter.
Nietzsche realized that the people of Europe lived as though God were dead, so
he made atheism the cornerstone of his existential philosophy. The news that
“God is dead” has now reached the “ears of man.” James Sire characterized postmodernism as
follows: (1) There has been a shift
in “first things” from being to knowing to constructing meaning. . . . (2) The
truth about the reality is forever hidden from us. All we can do is tell
stories [narratives]. . . . (3) All narratives mask a play for power. Any one
narrative used as a metanarrative is oppressive. . . . (4) Human beings make
themselves who they are by the languages they construct about themselves. . . .
(5) Ethics, like knowledge, is a linguistic construct. Social good is whatever
society takes it to be. . . . (6) The cutting edge of culture is literary
theory.[7] Postmodern thought has greatly influenced
contemporary culture. The hallmark of postmodern thought is the death of truth.
Don Matzat noted, “The only absolute truth that exists in the postmodern
mentality is that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and as far as the
postmodern scholar is concerned, that is absolutely true.”[8]
The self-contradiction is obvious but the postmodernist is not concerned with
logic or truth. Everyone has his or her own “truth” and the height of arrogance
is to say that one’s “truth” is actually the truth. Nothing frightens the
postmodernists more than a “fundamentalist” claim to absolute truth which they
view as nothing more than an attempt to oppress those who disagree. So with the
rise of postmodernism came ideas such as political correctness, tolerance,
moral relativism, multiculturalism, new age spirituality, religious syncretism,
empowerment of minorities, denigration of white European males, and homosexual
rights. Every area of society has been touched by postmodernism. Health care,
literature, education, history, psychotherapy, law, science, and religion are
all mutating under the influence of postmodernism.[9] Because of their claim to an exclusive metanarrative (worldview), conservative, Bible- believing Christians are alone in being exempt from society’s tolerance. Christians are not only ignored by the popular culture, they are increasingly singled out for ridicule and outright bashing by the kinder, gentler postmodernists. The postmodernist’s “tolerance” masks the reality of an underhanded power play. However, the Christian church has not escaped the influence of postmodernism. [1]Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Madman,” Gay Science
125, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Viking, 1954), 95-96. [2] James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic
World View Catalog, 3d ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 173. [3] Ibid., 175. [4] Ibid. [5] Gene Edward Veith Jr., Postmodern Times: A
Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture, (Wheaton: Crossway
Books, 1995), 32-33. [6] David Breese, Seven Men Who Rule the World From
the Grave (Oklahoma City: The Southwest Radio Church, 1980), 20-21. [7] Sire, 175-84. [8] Don Matzat, “Apologetics in a Postmodern
Age,” Issues, Etc. Journal 2, no. 5 (Fall 1997): 7. [9] Postmodernism’s influence in these areas is superbly
treated in Dennis McCallum, ed., The Death of Truth (Minneapolis:
Bethany House Publishers, 1996). Next chapter |
