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 PrintableVersion A Primer on Post-ModernismA PRIMER ON POST-MODERNISM This book has been around for a couple of years, but the turn of the millennium invites a review as Stanley Grenz, a professor at Regent College, Vancouver, introduces us to post-modernism, which it seems is to be the mindset of the future. He begins by likening the transition from modernism to post-modernism to the difference between Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation. Whereas Captain Kirk's crew stand in awe of the cold logic of Mr Spock, Jean-Luc Picard's new breed of explorers rely heavily on Counsellor Troi, a gifted woman with intuitive ability to read the hidden feelings of others. The secular scientific vision has failed to satisfy the human soul and something new is required. Thus Grenz launches into a whirlwind tour first of the post-modern ethos as reflected in cutting-edge culture from architecture to cinema, before spelling out in more detail what he describes as post-modernism's 'non-worldview', which questions everything about the Enlightenment outlook but refuses to replace it with anything it would claim of universal validity (except, of course, the universal truth that nothing is universally valid!). The middle section of the book answers the question: 'How did we get where we are?' with a brief, quite penetrating and, at times, fairly complicated history of philosophy from Descartes, though Hume and Kant and some lesser knowns who have only come to prominence recently like Wilhelm Dilthey and Hans-Georg Gadamer, to Nietzche and Heidegger who are seen as laying the foundations for post-modernism. He is then in a position to introduce post-modernism's 'three men I admire most'. He describes Michel Foucault's attack on history, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction of language and Richard Rorty's debunking of philosophy itself with his ultimate pragmatism. At this point, I think I wanted a reference to Romans 1, as post-modernism seeks to rationally undermine our rationality. Without God, people - thinking themselves to be wise - become fools. Post-modernism is, at least partially, God's judgment upon intellectualism. Grenz tells us that Christians must reject post-modernism's rejection of any overall coherence or story to history, and then sets out to explain how Christians can benefit from some of the insights and influences of post-modernism. Unlike the values of the Enlightenment, we do not believe that all truth is of a scientific kind, nor that all knowledge is good in itself. Modernism is individualistic. 'With its focus on community, the post-modern world encourages us to recognise the importance of the community of faith in our evangelistic efforts.' Grenz is helpful, but in his enthusiasm, tends to elevate experience above reason in gospel labours (thus revealing his own neo-Barthianism?). And I suppose here is my worry. I fear that Grenz, though very instructive, gets carried away and could carry other Christians away to cuddle up too closely to post-modernism. I am not sure that the post-modern mindset will be more open to the gospel. Rather, it seems to me to prepare the way for New Age religion. Jesus told the parable of the house swept clean being open to seven new demons. Modernism, with its arid scientism, left the house of Western culture swept clean and empty. We need to beware that the demons don't return. JEBDr John Benton© Evangelicals Now - December 1999 |
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