Postmodernism
Mo and Pomo…the Christian Response

There is a sense in which this entire Mo/Pomo discussion is irrelevant to Christians. After all, these movements are of men and have no affect of the Biblical God. God is in control of history and His story is about His covenant faithfulness to Israel and the Church. This story of God is not part of the world rather the world and man in it are part of God’s story. Without God there would be no world. And, of course, there is the rub. Mo and Pomo careen thorough God’s world as if He did not exist, or is at best an irrelevance. There is no concern of God’s creation, providence and redemption in Mo and Pomo. They are, after all, social movements of man.

But, as Christians we must seek to understand where man is, or at least where he thinks he is in history. We can only be effective witnesses of God’s grace and glory if we know the audience. So here in Pomo, how does one proclaim Truth in its propositional and personal dimensions where there are many truths? To begin with, at least Christianity merits a hearing in Pomo. It matters not that it is reasonable and foundationally revelatory. With no universal position as in Mo [reason] all truth claims are open for business. Christianity is relevant once again. But, there is a caveat. The Truth of Christianity can be true but it may be true for one but not another. All truths are true because they are believed, not because they are true. Truth in Pomo is a personal preference, no more no less.

Here, Pomo is vulnerable. To allow that all preferences are true because someone believes it leads to moral irresponsibility. How does a Pomo deal with a Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot? Together they killed millions because they thought it was right to do so. It was their personal truth. As one who has practiced law for 35 years, it is hard to conceive of justice without discerning truth. I have a revelation: Not everyone who testifies to the truth tells the truth! A life, a society, a world cannot be long sustained without standards or judgment that separate truth from error, truth from tyranny.

Pomo through its spokesmen malign truth and allow that it is merely a tool of repression. But, one must ask, how can they say that? Where is the standard used by them to make such a judgment? They smuggle their principles in the back door. Pomo fails to answer one simple question. Is Pomo true? If it is, why? If it is not, why do we believe it? Pomo affirms what it actually claims it is not…a system of truth preferable to all others.

Pomo gives the Christian a chance to do what Mo did not allow. Mo relegated Christianity to proving Truth by reason alone. Pomo on the other hand grants a hearing to the Truth of Christianity without any limits. There is a dangerous tendency, however, for an accommodation to Pomo as there was to Mo. Those styled as “reformist evangelicals” and the “emerging church movement” tend to be relativistic in Truth claims and without boundaries of belief. Is this not adapting Pomo to the church? One must ask whether the Christian is affecting the culture or the culture is infecting the Christian. The Christian must not miss the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel as Truth both in belief and living, teaching others to be hearers and doers of the Word. The culture, be it Mo or Pomo, must not be shown that the Gospel is intelligible or the best preference available, but that the world and individual lives are not intelligible without the Truth of the Gospel.

Memorial Day 2007
Preparation

As a nation, we observed Memorial Day on Monday, 28 May, because of our lust or three day weekends. The actual Memorial Day is 30 May. This post splits the difference.

I had an opportunity to visit the National Cemetery in Marietta, GA, over the weekend. It is a plot in the middle of the city that began when the land was donated by a local citizen to bury Union war casualties. It is fascinating to wander through the old portions of that burial ground and see the markers o fallen soldiers from northern states buried so far away so long ago. I observed a marker of one who carried my surname.

The Civil War was a bloody conflict that pitted brother against brother and citizen against citizen. Even in Clearfield County, far from the military conflict carried on by the two armies, there was a casualty. A Union soldier was killed trying to apprehend a deserter in Knox Township in a skirmish dubbed the Battle of Bloody Knox. But, as I wandered around the National Cemetery I was again impressed with our need to remember those who have gone before and given their life in battle for our freedom, and, specifically, the need for burial grounds.

A few years past in the SGM Magazine, I wrote an article about the importance of cemeteries, entitled “Gardens of he Saints”, a portion of which is as follows:

Every Memorial Day brings home the importance of cemeteries. They are where those who have gone before us reside. We have the opportunity to go to the last resting place of those to whom we need to pay homage for their sacrifice and provision for us. In Clearfield County, PA, there are nearly 100 cemeteries. Green carpeted gardens of saints connected to churches, in municipalities or public in nature.

You can see automobiles with license plates from all over the US in the cemeteries. For some, it is there first trip back in some time. Others make the trek every year to pay respects to departed loved ones. And, every cemetery has a Memorial Day service. Some with high school bands, prominent speakers and a VFW honor guard with carbines that are fired once a year for the 21 gun salute. Others have small affairs where families or pastors gather for prayer. But, like much of Americana, these green burial places are fading from our lives.

In Inglewood Park, California, cremation rates are approaching 50%. This is a upward trend evidenced in every state. And while some argue urns of ashes can be buried in cemeteries, the fact is that is not happening. The mausoleum is the new way. The arguments are many to support such a move. Maintenance is easy; space is used more efficiently; and weather elements are not a factor. Furthermore, these new above ground memorials with drawers for remains can be designed with gardens and modern or classical architecture. Mike Baklarz of Cold Spring Granite promotes the mausoleum, “You are in a spiritual sanctuary that is also a beautiful park and art museum featuring some of the best and most durable architecture you will ever see.”

The individual who donated the land for the burial of enemy dead in Marietta, GA, understood the importance of burial. It is a Christian practice to bury the dead. In India the bodies of the dead are burned because the body is perishable, undesirable and weak. There is no hope for the body; it is incinerated because it has no place in the next life. Not so for Christians. We believe the body will be resurrected some day and we are compelled to be buried like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The loss of Gardens of the Saints is another indication of our loss of Christian practice and heritage.

The ending of the aforesaid article is appropriate for every Memorial Day:

Is it progress to abandon the hope of bodily resurrection with drawers of ashes in a temperature controlled building? There seems to be a regression into paganism taking place. Here in the Eastern Continental Divide we will continue to visit our graveyards, remembering and memorializing with the joy of hope. In the meantime the bodies there are quietly waiting for that grand and glorious day when they will no longer be asleep but be alive forever.

Burial for the Christian is preparation…preparation for his or her own resurrection. To abandon that hope is to minimize the Gospel that saves, sanctifies and glorifies.

Postmodernism
Is Pomo an answer to Mo for Christians?

Modernism (Mo) contributed greatly to the problem of cross-cultural ministry. The idea that all persons throughout the world must be converted to a purely rational Christianity is more that problematic. That type of theory ignores the various environments, cultures and circumstances where the Gospel must be proclaimed to fulfill the Great Commission. It sounds a lot like Hegel with his universal religion of reason with no room for particulars. In everywhere but the west, the hearer must think like a westerner before he can hear the Gospel.

Jesus said He was “the way, the Truth and the life.”[Jn 14:6] Christianity has rightly emphasized the issue of Truth. But, Truth is more than a set of correct propositions. Truth is personal, embodied in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. Truth for the Christian must go beyond mere reason. It is a concept based on the promises of a God Who can be relied upon and trusted, a righteous God Who will keep the covenant He has made with His people. Truth is transformational to the believer because believing in the Truth is to be possessed by the Truth. Truth is indeed a proposition but it is also an agent of change in the life of the Christian. It is more than Mo would have it.

Today, we are told by the intelligentsia, that the culture is Post-Modern (Pomo). It seems ironic that a movement that rejected the past is now past. Os Guisness in his book Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, relates this definition of Pomo:

“There is not truth; only truths. There is no grand reason; only reasons. There is no privileged civilization (or culture, belief, norm and style); only a multiplicity or cultures, beliefs, norms and styles. There is no universal justice; only interests and the competition of interest groups. There is no grand narrative of human progress only countless stories of where people and their cultures are now. There is no simple reality or any grand objectivity or universal, detached knowledge, only a ceaseless representation of everything in terms of everything else.”
It is heard in the phrase “everything is relative” [relativism] or “there are many ways to God”[pluralism].

Pomo is fundamentally opposed to Mo and its idea of understanding and mastering the world through reason. Truth and reason are useless in a chaotic world. However, Pomo may best be thought of as the step-child of Mo and not a new species. Listen to what J. Bottum says in First Things [February 1994]:

“…post-modernity is still in the line of modernity, as rebellion against rebellion is still rebellion, as an attack on the constraints of grammar must still be written in grammatical sentences, as a skeptical argument against the structures of rationality must still be put rationally.”

To argue meaninglessness must still be put meaningfully if it is to have meaning to you and me.

Pomo may only be the logical extension of Mo that has failed to understand and control the world through reason. Charles Jencks in What is Postmodernism?, says Pomo is “both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence.”

A.J. Conyers calls Pomo “perfectly loyal to the project of modernity while posing as its critic” and claims that Pomo luminaries such as Derrida and Foucault do not believe Pomo is a critique of Mo but
“…an attempt to save the sinking ship of modernity by throwing overboard some of the most inessential features while preserving its essence.”

It is far from clear that Pomo is an answer to the problems Mo created for the propagation of the Gospel. Is there an answer or Christian belief and evangelism in the cultural confusion of the 21st century? Have a blessed Decoration or Memorial Day [what it is called is age dependant] remembering those who have gone before us and next week we will post on how to respond to Mo and Pomo as Christians living in the 21st century. In the mean time let me know how you do so?

Postmodernism
Why Modernism is a problem for Christians

The Enlightenment elevated human reason to a position of supremacy. The Enlightenment principle was that all man needed to know about life, including God, was available through human reason. And, in understanding there was no need or room for revelation. Reason was sufficient. Enlightenment thinkers sought to establish objectivity in science, morality and law that was not dependent on history, location or culture of the individual. Louis Dumont describes the Enlightenment man as “ an independent, autonomous, and essentially non-social human being”.

G.F.W. Hegel, in his essay “Uber die Religion der Griechen und Romer”, sets forth how the Enlightenment affected religion. Religious particularity was a function of culture and political specifics. However, there are really universal truths found by the reasoning intellectual elites…an unadulterated universal ethical religion based on reason. To Hegel, Christianity was one of the manifestations of the ethical religion of reason. Alister McGrath explains Hegel’s view of proper Christianity:
“The only way in which progress could be made was to maintain a commitment of some sort to Christianity, while simultaneously undermining its claims to uniqueness or universality.”
In other words, Jesus was a wonderful teacher of ethics but He is not the only way. A refrain oft repeated since Hegal came on the scene.

This intellectual impulse spawned the cultural idea of Modernism (Mo). It was the seeping into our daily living of the enthronement of reason. Modernity sought to eliminate God from the picture of life by securing all knowledge through the structures of human rationality. Modernity also deliberately rejected the past and believed man, through pure reason, could understand and master the world. This Mo has affected everything, including Christianity.

One of the problems Mo created was in propagating the Gospel. Christians tried to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ intelligible to the world. It was here that the concept of Christianity as another “worldview” developed. Unwittingly, such an approach gave credence to all the other “worldviews” or “isms” afoot in the cosmos. It was like this…”our worldview based on the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is more sensible that any other.” While it is true that faith is reasonable, faith is not based on reason. It is a supernatural revelation from God. Mo had Christians playing on its terms, already dismissing revelation.

This was especially a problem for the Reformed folk who were powerfully influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment’s Common Sense philosophy. The Princeton Theology, evidenced by Hodge and Warfield, is based on a high degree of confidence in human reason. George Marsden has commented that Princeton was dominated by the idea:
“…that any sane and unbiased person of common sense could and must perceive the same things…basic truths are much the same for all persons in all times and places.”
The obvious danger is that Christianity could be reduced to a set of mentally accepted concepts or principles discerned by human reason. This is an accommodation to Mo. And, from those who believe in the total depravity of man!

[This is adapted from an article that first appeared in the SGM Magazine as “Mo, Pomo and the Christian”]

Education from a Christian Perspective
Colorado Funding Decision

Everyone seems to agree that education is needed. Where we stumble is what is education; is education from a Christian perspective a warranted part of what the state should foster in education; and should state funding be available for education from a Christian perspective. This post is about the last matter.

Litigation is a lousy way to make decisions, yet because of the muddled state of church/state relations in the federal judiciary, all controversies on funding education from a Christian perspective end up in litigation. Here is an example from the Chronicles of Higher Education:

Colorado Christian University filed a federal lawsuit in 2004, arguing that Colorado laws that deny state aid to students who attend the private institution violate the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit argued that the Colorado Commission on Higher Education was denying the institution's First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and the right to equal protection under the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

The commission decided in 2004 that Colorado Christian was not eligible for the tuition-assistance program. It found that the university was pervasively sectarian because it failed to meet a series of state requirements: that faculty members and students are not exclusively of one religious persuasion, that the college does not require attendance at religious convocations or services, that it does not require students to take courses in religion or theology that tend to indoctrinate or proselytize, and that its funds do not come primarily or predominantly from sources who advocate a particular religion.

The US District Court in Denver found that state’s position did not violate the university’s “free exercise” right in the 1st Amendment. The Colorado Opportunity Fund permits students at eligible private schools who meet a needs based test to receive half the stipend a student in an undergraduate program at a public college or university receives. Two private schools, Regis University (a Roman Catholic institution) and University of Denver are eligible.

There are, of course, numerous issues arise from such a decision including the second one I set forth above. Is it judicious for states to pursue private college funding yet find ineligible institutions that maintain an authentic commitment to historic Protestant Christianity? Is it for the common good to promote what Colorado labels as “pervasive sectarian” views in undergraduate college education. And, I guess that requires an answer to the first question…what is education? This case is by no means the end of the controversy that will undoubtedly spread to other states and may eventually meander its way to the SCOTUS.

Abortion and the SCOTUS
Language

The older I become the more I see the need for defining what you mean when you use a term. Take evangelical, what does it mean to call oneself an evangelical? It used to have a pretty clear meaning: 1] One who believed in justification by faith and 2] one who believed in the inerrancy, infallibility and inspiration of Holy Scripture, wherein the Gospel is taught and thereby embraced. This, of course, is no longer the case. Evangelical, and the justification by faith and the dimensions of Scripture that heretofore defined it, are all up for grabs. So, I make it a point to ask folks who use these terms to define them so I know where they are coming from.

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the latest SCOTUS decision on abortion, there is an interesting bit of side bar by Justice Ginsburg in her dissent. She is upset with the majority deciding that partial birth abortion is not a protected right of women. She argues that this case flies in the face of the Nebraska Carhart case that struck down the procedure as unconstitutional. And, she goes through the whole litany of arguments that anti-abortion statutes are based on the pre-enlightened patriarchy that suppressed women that Roe and its progeny resolved:

As Casey comprehended, at stake in cases challenging abortion restrictions is a woman's "control over her [own] destiny." 505 U. S., at 869 (plurality opinion). See also id., at 852 (majority opinion).2 "There was a time, not so long ago," when women were "regarded as the center of home and family life, with attendant special responsibilities that precluded full and independent legal status under the Constitution." Id., at 896-897 (quoting Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U. S. 57, 62 (1961)). Those views, this Court made clear in Casey, "are no longer consistent with our understanding of the family, the individual, or the Constitution." 505 U. S., at 897.

In her comments are about the use of language she takes umbrage with how the majority uses terms in its opinion. Here is that section:

Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label "abortion doctor." Ante, at 14, 24, 25, 31, 33. A fetus is described as an "unborn child," and as a "baby," ante, at 3, 8; second-trimester, pre-viability abortions are referred to as "late-term," ante, at 26; and the reasoned medical judgments of highly trained doctors are dismissed as "preferences" motivated by "mere convenience," ante, at 3, 37. Instead of the heightened scrutiny we have previously applied, the Court determines that a "rational" ground is enough to uphold the Act, ante, at 28, 37. And, most troubling, Casey's principles, confirming the continuing vitality of "the essential holding of Roe," are merely "assume[d]" for the moment, ante, at 15, 31, rather than "retained" or "reaffirmed," Casey, 505 U. S., at 846.

Justice Ginsburg is disturbed that the court is using “pejorative” terms to buttress their position. However, the term “abortion doctor” is used by…well…abortion doctors, in editorials in the NY Times, Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups. And, the terms “unborn child” and “baby” highlights the fact that PBA does destroy life in a gruesome manner. It is no wonder that abortion rights folk want to use the term “fetus” since it is a dehumanizing term. Finally, confirming “the essential holding of Roe” instead of affirming or retaining Roe may be nothing more than a linguistic devise. But, on the other hand…………..

Back to our original point, what do we mean when we use terms? For a long time the abortion advocates controlled the language: pro-rights instead of pro-abortion; fetus instead of unborn child; OBG surgeons instead of abortionists. And, if you look in the print and electronic media, the pro-abortion language is the language of choice. So what did the majority mean in using the terms they did? Was it language appropriate to the gruesome PBA? Or, did it signal a change in view of abortion jurisprudence whereby the Ginsburg’s of the world need to be concerned that Roe is in danger? The Court watchers on both sides have their opinions. And, since we cannot ask the majority justices, we will have to wait to see if the language in Gonzales has long term ramifications.

[A more detailed look at this case and the global warming case will be forthcoming in the SGM Magazine]