not to interpret the text, but perform it (sequel)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
Having posted recently about the move from emphasising theory to practice in hard Christian thinking, I was fascinated to come across Andrew Pickering’s performative description of science. My starting point was a CBC postcast on ‘Thinking about science’ (see their podcast page), which includes an interview with Pickering. The interview explicitly touches on this idea as a reaction to modernity (albeit one that emcompasses the modern approach).
I found the whole thing making all sorts of connections, so (when I’m more awake) I’ll probably fire off some reactions to this (elsewhere).
Tags: postmodernism, praxis, science
A hermeneutic of heroes
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
I did a seminar on culture over the weekend. I may get around to posting a write-up of my notes, but in the meantime…
As part of the talk, I attempted to use some TV programs as examples of modern and post-modern worldviews. (Slightly mis-judged the popularity of some shows, but there we go.) So the examples don’t go to waste, let’s recycle them here.
In fact, I’ll start with one that has been rolling around my mind for a very very very long time. I didn’t use it over the weekend, but maybe I should have. It seems to me the the X-files is the perfect enactment of the modern/post-modern clash. (I guess someone somewhere has done this before.)
On the one side we had the Thoroughly Modern Scully. Everything is science-based and we need only examine properly to overcome our ignorance. On the other side, the archetypally post-modern Mulder — accepting of all myths and local stories, without any attempt to fit them into some overarching worldview; suspicious of the authorities and the narratives they weave, assuming that these narratives are there to hide and control; not driven primarily by a search for truth, but a relational-based search for his sister.
Coming more up-to-date, it seems like CSI is the perfect modern story — a team of heroes battle ignorance, using science and technology to fight injustice and apprehend the guilty.
On the other hand, there is a common underlying theme to Lost & Heroes that facinates me. Both have a number of relatively ordinary people thrust into bewildering circumstances. In both there is an interweaving of each person’s personal story — in both, paths are frequently crossing, apparently by accident(?). There is the feeling that this interweaving may have design to it, but we cannot be sure what or who controls this. Certainly those involved have no grasp of a larger story that they are part of, though they may suspect that there is one.
Perhaps Heroes and Lost reflect the feeling of our somewhere-on-the-edge-of-post-modern times. Having rejected the big stories, we now have the feeling that there is one, but we have no way to appropriate it
This feeling of some apparently unknowable overarching narrative makes me think of Paul in Athens. Remember that he looked around, saw the altar to an Unknown God and proceeded to associate this with the God incarnated in Jesus. Maybe it is time for us to say that we know the Unknown Author who is writing the big story? He is the one incarnated as the character of Jesus and he is not the tyrant you thought he was.
Tags: culture, postmodernism, story, worldview
safety in numbers (2)
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In early Christian art, the Trinity was often depicted by three identical people. An interesting way to try and depict the un-depictable. But, perhaps, it also points to a possible shortcoming when we try to think Trinitarianly.
As I said in my previous post, the Trinity is the basis for the value of diversity. It acts this way because diversity is intrinsic to the being of God. But it seems to me that it is easy to almost-but-not-quite get to this point.
The almost-but-not quite start is to think of the Trinity as three identical beings in one. I think I see that, for me at least, this is in my underlying assumptions. My worry then is that this reduced view of the Trinity takes us from thinking in terms of diversity to thinking in terms of uniformity: We believe in people joined in unity, but we assume they must be identical, with the differences ironed out so that they are indistinguishable.
I don’t think that uniformity is the goal, or what God is like. Of course, we know very little about the personalities of God, but I think we can say that the doctrine of the Trinity is about three different (i.e. non-identical) personalities in one. How can we make this step? At the every least, we know this: that post-pentecost God is a single being who has lived three different stories: that of Father, Son and Spirit. And surely identity is related to some degree or another to personal story. (Ricoeur: ‘Characters … are themselves plots’.) Kevin Vanhoozer discusses this idea of narrative identity: “Who God is, and what God is like, is a function of the entangled life histories of Father, Son and Spirit related in the gospels.” So, for instance, the incarnation immediately shows that God is not a community of uniformity but one of diversity, of three (non-identical) persons with different stories.
The result: we have a basis for celebrating true diversity-and-unity not just a uniform crowd.
Tags: church, postmodernism, theology
safety in numbers
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
In a recent post, I referred to the Christian story as being a metanarrative that has safeguards that act to ‘curb injustice and value those who are different, marginalised and oppressed’. This is a big theme of ‘Truth is Stranger than it used to be’ by Middleton and Walsh. Before I get on to their ideas lets try one that they don’t major on as much — the significance of the Trinity for this context.
Francis Schaeffer often talked about the significance of the Trinity to the philosophical question of unity and diversity: If the universe has a unity as origin, where does diversity come from? If it has a diverse origin, how come it all fits together? Maybe in a post-modern context, we can turn this on its head: because diversity is integral in the origin of the universe then diversity should be a highly valued attribute. (And because the origin is an all-powerful personal being, then we might expect diversity to be guarded.)
[I should say that, if I remember correctly, Kevin Vanhoozer and Brian McLaren have touched on this sort of thing in First Theology and A Generous Orthodoxy.]
Of course, the church has not always held diversity in high regard, by any means. But we have to admit that a value of diversity lies at the heart of its belief structure. And should be something that the church exhibits. I wonder if the times when unity (or even uniformity) is held above diversity are the times when the church loses a clear grasp on Trinity?
At this point we can bring in some comments from Jeremy Begbie (taken from the article Music in God’s World)
In polyphony, more than one melody is played or sung simultaneously, each moving to some extent independently of the others. A central cantus firmus gives coherence and enables the other parts to flourish in relation to one another. …Christ lives in the polyphony of the Trinity, and by the Spirit we are granted, through him, a share in this trinitarian “enchantment.”
Christians are thus polyphonic people. At Pentecost, in opening the disciples and crowds to Jesus Christ and his Father, the Spirit opens people out to one another. Those otherwise closed in on themselves—because of language, culture, race, religion—now find themselves resonating with one another, communicating, and living together in radically new ways. … People become responsive to one another, tuned in to one another (the reversal of Babel, where confusion and dissonance reigned). But uniqueness is not erased; the crowds in Jerusalem were not given one language. They heard each other in their “own tongues” … More than this, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, the Spirit not only allows difference but also promotes it…
In the church’s founding moment diversity-in-unity was a key component. And it should continue to be. In acting faithfully to that moment, and coherently with our belief in Trinity, we begin to show the wisdom — and trustworthiness — of God and his story.
Tags: apologetics, postmodernism
the other tension…
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
After discussing the tensions in postmodernism, I wonder if there is another tension in our postmodern make-up…
In the world it is called tolerance but in hell it is called dispair. The sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, enjoys nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing but remains alive because there is nothing which it would die for.Dorothy L Sayers
A Princeton student being interviewed by a reporter was questioned about the prospect of American troops going to Afghanistan when the Soviet Union invaded there. “There’s nothing worth dying for” was her response. Which means of course that one day she shall have the unpleasant task of dying for nothing.Stanley Hawerwas and William H. Willimon
(The first is quoted in ‘Finding God at Harvard’; the second is from ‘Resident Aliens’.)
Tags: culture, postmodernism, worldview
friction in the space between
Posted by Paul | Filed under uncategorised
On the off-chance that anyone is still reading my thoughts on apologetics and the distrust in postmodernism, I want to have another look at plot tensions in the postmodern story (see also I never met a narrative I trusted). Perhaps we can ask these questions:
At what point does a narrative become big enough to be distrusted? All stories try to explain something about the world. At what point does the explaining cover enough to be totalising?
Is it really big stories that produce violence and oppression? Or is it anytime two stories come into contact? Looking at the ethnic violence that we have seen all around the world in recent years, it seems stories don’t have to be that big, they just have to meet and, I guess, overlap in some way. The plots have to collide and find that they don’t match up.
Going further, is it possible that the postmodern fall of the big stories has in fact contributed to the violence by allowing the small stories to run wild and meet in conflict? Rather than freeing the world from violence and oppression, maybe it has contributed by cutting the (yes, oppressive) constraints.
If so, what is the solution? If big stories are oppressive and all stories result in violence when they collide, what hope do we have?
Perhaps our only hope is for a story that absorbs the violence. A story that meets others and doesn’t fight back, but turns the other cheek in some way…
Tags: apologetics, postmodernism, story
A random walk over culture, art, christianity, etc. with occasional photographs...