pictures for post-postmodernism

Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised

A comment by Jonny got me thinking about where postmodernism is going. At some point we have to stop just being pleased that we’ve got free of modernism and move on to something else; to stop simply being post- and find something in its own right.

To quote Tom Wright in The Challenge of Jesus:

The gospel of Jesus points us, and indeed urges us, to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even … biblical studies, a worldview which will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the postpostmodern world with joy and humour and gentleness and good judgement and true wisdom. I believe we face the question: If not now, then when? … If not us, then who?

In that spirit, here are three pictures that I’d like to throw into the mix:

Trinity
Modernism had the problem of large monolithic narratives dominating all; in contrast, postmodernism seems to have an array of little narratives which have no hope of coherence. The Trinity is our model of unity-in-diversity. We need to find a way to accept diversity without fracturing, with some sense of unity.
Trinity also implies that ultimate reality is loving relationship at heart. Knowing is relationship, not objectivity. But, more than that, as Trinity is three-in-one, it doesn’t allow everything to fall into subjectivity; it’s not just that everything finds its meaning in how it relates to me (as we could imagine with a two-in-one ultimate reality), but there are also (loving) relationships outside the ones that I am involved in.

Incarnation
The incarnation gives us a picture of the timeless and trancendent co-existing with the historical and particular. The trancendent ‘Word’ submits himself to a particular culture, a specific expression. Love is expressed, risk is taken, by entering another’s world and speaking the universal.
 
Babel & Pentecost
As Middleton and Walsh point out in Truth is stranger than it used to be, Babel — the confusion of languages — is an remarkably appropriate analogy for postmodernism. But the events of Pentecost indicate the winding back of Babel  — the confusion is undone when the disciples speak in tongues and people from many cultures hear & understand. (Remembering, of course, that the Spirit is the one who undoes the damage.) The interesting thing is the emphasis in Acts: all hear what’s being said in their own language (not the thing we focus on: the disciples can speak in other languages). The one Message is heard by all in a way that is understood by the diverse cultures and viewpoints. It’s not destruction of difference, but communication across diversity.

 

Permalink | May 2nd, 2006

One Response to “pictures for post-postmodernism”

  1. jonnyjpg Says:
    jonnyjpg May 3rd, 2006 at 9:13 am

    nice.
    I like the trinitarian thought. made me think about that relationship in a new way. there is no envy or jelousy in the trinity it works on a giving sacrificial love.
    “it’s not just that everything finds its meaning in how it relates to me (as we could imagine with a two-in-one ultimate reality), but there are also (loving) relationships outside the ones that I am involved in.”
    - i like that.

    the Babel & Pentecost analogy is great. especially as Babel is such a great metaphor for the arrogance of modernity.

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