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).

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.

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.

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.

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’.)

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…

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.

It seems to me that this sums up the cynicism that comes from commericialism identified by Dick Keyes (see last post) and some of the distrust of postmodernism (see another previous post).

And what do we take from this? Perhaps that people want honesty. We know that the world is broken and, if we are going to trust, we need people to acknowledge this. We don’t want a glossing over that implies ‘try my option and everything will go smoothly’.

As Christians, we might try to ignore the brokenness of life in the mistaken belief that this makes what we have more attractive. Perhaps the example of commercialism points us this way — ensure life looks rosy with your product and everyone will want it. But we need to be careful not to fall into step with the wider culture and we need to be honest.

One reason, the Biblical story can be trusted is that is faces up to the pain and brokenness and doesn’t look away. To quote Colossians Remixed

The biblical embrace of pain refuses to cover up or deny suffering. … the biblical trajectory … highlights ‘absence’ — the absence of justice and shalom, and in the lament tradition even the absence of God.

If we want to produce art that reflects the biblical tradition and connects with those cynical from commercialism and untrusting from exploitation of the big stories then we have to face up to the absence and brokenness.

Of course, as we have to continually keep in mind, this is done in the context of the existence of God, the God who is ‘intimately involved with the suffering’, who is the true hope. We cannot feel the absence if the presence is not hoped for.

Some people think that apologetics isn’t useful today; but I think it still is, though only after trust has been built and we have been asked questions … people want to know there’s validity to what I believe, and apologetics has been helpful to me in showing that to them. I believe we need apologetics more than ever today, but we need to know what the current questons are. Sometimes in apologetics we develop detailed answers to questions people in emerging generations aren’t asking.

There seems to be a tendency to interpret post-modernism as a flight from reason. But people still want to know that their beliefs are reasonable; we can’t really live irrationally. But the first barrier is trust, not logical consistency. Going back to the response Curtis Chang received:

“Yeah, well, so what? … Who’s to say that your logic isn’t all made up?”

The fear seems to be that of being conned through logic; once the distrust is overcome there is still a need to show that what we believe makes sense.
It seems to me that this is where Peter is coming from when he says, ‘always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that is within you’ — not trying to argue people to God, but showing that what we believe is well-founded.

Let’s try for Curtis Chang’s approach of entering the story and seeing where the plot tension lies (see Engaging Unbelief).

We’ve suggested that post-modernism is at heart distrust of meta-narratives. But, perhaps a first tension is that it’s not at all clear that we can live without some big story. But more than that, going back to the place we started, we have, at the very least, to accept that post-modernism itself acts as a meta-narrative.

Perhaps the real longing in post-modernism is to find a meta-narrative we can trust. Perhaps, the underlying theme of the ‘distrust all meta-narratives’ advice is really ‘here, at last, is a trustworthy story’. In effect, it says ‘by allowing all the little stories to co-exist under my wings, everyone will be accepted and not oppressed’. So, the question becomes — is post-modernism a trustworthy story?

Obviously, the proponents will say ‘yes’. But, isn’t that what proponents always do? You have to ask those who don’t fit — and despite the claims, there are those who don’t fit. Because, you are only safe if your story is sufficiently small. If you attempt for an overarching narrative, then you are suspect and the famed tolerance begins to wain. It seems like the postmodern narrative doesn’t live up to its promise. At the very least, it has to beat down all other stories until they submit to its overarching aim. It can’t function in the co-exist mode that it requires.

So, how is the tension resolved? We need to find a meta-narrative that is trustworthy, the does not operate via injustice. This is where Middleton and Walsh are aiming in ‘Truth is Stranger than it used to be’. They put forward the idea that the Christian story includes in it the mechanisms to curb injustice and value those who are different, marginalised and oppressed. That despite being meta it can be trusted. (The ideas are recapped in Walsh and Keesmat’s ‘Colossians Remixed’.)

I’ll try to summarise their ideas in the near future, but in the mean time Scot McKnight discusses that part of the Colossians book in a recent Jesus Creed post.

First, a clarification: although I’m quoting ‘professionals’, I’m really putting forward ideas about post-modernism of the street.

Next, another quote that I re-found. This is from Walsh & Keesmat’s Colossians Remixed (on which there is an interesting on-going discussion on Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed Blog). Like Curtis Chang they quote from discussions to show the perspective of many on the other end of the apologetic conversation. In examplining the view of a conversation partner ‘William’, they conclude:

Of course truth is relative, replies Wiliam. Just consider the alternative! The modernist pretense to have objectively grasped a total reality invariably results in a totalitarian social practice.
…
William has renounced the quest for a total scheme of things because it is both unattainable and inherently violent. In this important respect william is postmodern.

Which I think starts to link my comments on postmodernism being about justice (i.e. non-violent in the widest sense) to the view of postmodernism as asserting truth-is-relative.

Finally, an random connection came to mind. It’s interesting to consider Brian McLaren’s book ‘The Last Word and the Word after That’ in the context of the last post. The book is essentially a conversation about Hell. And at the start functions (I think in MacLaren’s words) as a deconstruction of our ideas and expression of our discomfort with the traditional pictures. But then the second half of the book moves on to God’s justice. The key conclusion being that, whatever our view of ‘Hell’, there must be some judgment for justice to prevail. So, it seems that, indeed, justice cannot be deconstructed, as Derrida claimed. And because it is at heart a search for justice, postmodernising has to face up to that justice and take it seriously.