- Apr 23, 2006 - Postmodernism
- Introduction
- Postmodernism
- History
- Characteristics
- Consequences
- Ironies
- Brief Case Study
- Emergent Church
- Pomo
- Trick question
- Ought we to be pre-modern, modern, or post-modern?
- Quick history
- Søren Kierkegaard, c.1843
- "Truth is subjectivity" One aspect of Postmodernism that is almost impossible to debate: its language is inextricably linked to modernism.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, c.1880
- no fixed values, God is dead
- Dada movement, c.1920
- a focus on the framing of objects and discourse as being as important, or more important, than the work itself
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, c.1950
- anti-foundationalism, no certainty, a philosophy of language
- Thomas Samuel Kuhn, c.1962
- posited the rapid change of the basis of scientific knowledge to a provisional consensus of scientists, coined the term "paradigm shift"
- Jacques Derrida, c.1970
- re-examining the fundamentals of knowledge, deconstruction
- Jean Baudrillard, c.1981
- Simulacra and Simulation - reality created by media
- Other names
- Karl Barth, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michel Foucalt, Richard Rorty
- Basic characteristics of Pomo
- Clarifications
- Postmodern vs postmodernist
- Pomo is a western, mainly industrialized thing
- Deconstruction
- Language is inherently unstable
- Words are define by words, which are defined by more words
- Meanings rest on opposition and exclusion
- Freedom is a word because its opposite exists
- Man is the opposite of woman
- Hermeneutics of suspicion
- Consequence of deconstruction
- What the author intended the text to mean is almost irrelevant
- Language is power, and therefore has been used to oppress
- Aversion to "Dead white males" as symbols of past oppression
- Greek philosophers
- European philosophers
- Our founding fathers
- Pomo-ists tend to have an agenda
- Feminist Jesus
- Homosexual Jesus
- Meaning as "texts"
- No metanarrative allowed
- Stories and rhetoric are very important
- Language determines thought
- But babies can have logical categories before understanding language
- Pomo is both silly and scary
- Has taken over the arts and humanities, and this is where worldviews get communicated
- Consequences
- Critique/Ironies of Pomo
- Invented by "Dead White Males"
- Is it a power play of the humanities over the sciences?
- Self-refuting
- Pomo people don't like it when you deconstruct/misinterpret what they say
- Pomo people don't like the consequences of moral relativism (i.e. feminists in the US don't like culturally-appropriate mistreatment of women in other cultures)
- Fundamentally a denial of the existence of a God who communicates
- Case Study
- Take Dan Brown..
- DaVinci code is about oppression of women.. conspiracy theory
- Brown talks about history being interpreting the interpreters
- History written by the winners
- Origins of his book as a personal narrative.
- "I was on a spiritual search"
- He makes any attacks on his book to be against him
- He claims that they have a right to exist, but then tries to debunk them.. very tolerant
- "It's dangerous to believe we're infallible."
- He doesn't address the real issue; everything he says is as if it's all subjective
- Is he wrong? Are they right? Irrelevant.
- Emergent Church
- Not all bad. Not all good. We have a lot to learn from it.
- It can mean anything from really re-thinking church, to embracing Pomo
- "Emergent is a growing generative friendship among missional Christian leaders seeking to love our world in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. "
- Characteristics
- Protest
- Against modernism
- Traditional evangelicalism/fundamentalism
- Seeker-sensitive churches
- Story vs. explanation in sermons
- Emphasis on the story-orientation of Hebrew culture and Jesus
- Dialogue vs. debate
- Missional
- All things to all men
- Focus on outsiders, the unchurched
- Desire for authenticity
- Often fans of Kirkegaard, Barth
- Critique
- False antitheses
- Modernism vs Postmodernism
- Fundamentalism vs Emergent
- Benefits
- Rethink the relationship between culture and church practice
- The Bible does talk a lot more about service, humility, etc, than about being right. Being right is not an end, but a means to better equip us in worship, evangelism, service
- We could stand to pay attention to their practical strengths without succombing to some of the epistemological weaknesses