By Kevin Moore
James Smith’s book “Who’s Afraid of Post-Modernism” is an interesting addition to a contemporary Christian’s bookshelves. He, as the title suggests, deals with the ideologies of postmodernity, and how the church as it exists today interacts with these ideals. I’d like to deal with one chapter in particular, entitled “Where Have All the Metanarratives Gone? Lyotard, Postmodernism, and the Christian Story.”
Smith begins the chapter with an allusion to the Coen Brothers’ film from 2000, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” Specifically, Smith discusses Clooney’s Ulysses Everett McGill, and claims that Ulysses encapsulates a certain “postmodern tension.” Ulysses strongly desires everything to be explained away scientifically (a trait of modernity), but his world displays certain mystical phenomena that he can not rectify with science or pragmatic thought (a mystical character prophesied Ulysses would see a cow on a roof). Therein lies the tension, for Ulysses’s worldview excludes certain facts and realities of his life while claiming to have all the answers. Postmodernism is all about the ways we live our lives, what we exclude from our focus by doing so, and analyzing the whole resulting mess. Metanarratives—the unwritten rules that govern us—are necessarily exclusive and messy, whether we know it or not.
The issue of exclusion is something that Jean-François Lyotard addresses in “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.” Lyotard claims that postmodernism brings forward, at its most basic, an “incredulity towards metanarratives.” Postmodern thought doesn’t believe in these overarching ideologies that inform our behaviors and decisions. For Smith, this is a joyful moment; he claims that “Christian faith actually requires that we, too, stop believing in metanarratives.” To clarify, he defines these grand stories as also appealing to a universal reason.
The key word in that definition is “reason.” Faith, by definition, can not be based in reason. Therefore, the church can squeak by Lyotard’s skepticism of metanarratives on a technicality. Because the metanarrative the church provides does not scientifically claim, as modern thought did, to be the truth with pragmatic reason (which is simply another narrative) as its basis, postmodernity allows it. Smith says it this way:
“Postmodernism opens the space for Christian witness to be bold in its proclamation, its narration of the story. While in modernity science was the emperor who set the rules for what counted as truth and castigated faith as fable, postmodernity has shown us the emperor’s nudity. As such, we no longer need to apologize for faith—we can be unapologetic in our kerygmatic proclamation of the gospel narrative.”
But, here’s the problem: the postmodern pantheon takes our kerygmatic proclamations, listens to them, and moves on. Smith is so overjoyed with the idea that postmodernism and faith can coexist that he fails to realize that postmodern thought can dismiss us as one voice out of many. We as Christians should never want that. Postmodernism is a realm of pluralistic truth; the church claims to have absolute truth. Though we admit that it is based on faith, and not reason, we are no less resolute in the concreteness of the reality of our worldview—our metanarrative.
Smith doesn’t want Christians to fear postmodernism; however, I think that the church should, at least, be cautious of it. We can not place our trust in a system that files away our ideology by nature. We must believe that our answer is the answer. We are commanded to go forth and convert, to proselytize and preach, to live out our lives in ways that bring people to Jesus through the blessings of the Holy Spirit. We can not be content with equal standing with a myriad of worldviews. Our metanarrative is not of this world, but postmodernity will always try to drag it back down into the dirt with the rest of them. Postmodernism opens a door and shows us a large, round table of ideologies murmuring to one another. Smith would say we walk in, sit down, and lean back and forth in muted discussion. Yes, we must enter. Yes, we must sit, but we must fill the room with our voice until they kick us out.
Kevin, thanks for sharing your thoughts in this post, it’s a deep molasses for sure and one’s agreement or disagreement with some of your conclusions is going to based on who one is, what generation, what religious persuasion or background, education etc. In 45 years, I’ve rarely known someone who adheres to one view only. People are shades of ideas and views. They may be heavily influenced by a cultural narrative that is dominant but not 100%.
My main push back would be your handling of reason and presenting it as something antithetical to faith. There’s a whole lot of deep and broad christian history and present voices that would seriously disagree with that conclusion. That line of thought is the fruit of postmodernism assumptions.
The gospel had to be explained and reasoned quite differently among Jew and Greek. Both had significantly different meta-narratives but the gospel has plenty to connect with too. It’s the same in every generation. C.S. Lewis is a great example of one who could approach apologetics from story and nonfiction, we will need both at various times in our lives.
“If therefore any society of men calls upon us to believe in our religion what is false in our experience, to affirm that to be done which we know is impossible to ever be done, to wink hard that we may see the better….They make religion so to be seated in the will that our understanding will be useless and can never minister to it. But as he that shuts the eye hard and with violence curls the eyelid, forces a fantastic fire from the crystalline humor, and espies a light that never shines, and sees thousands of little fires that never burn: so is he that blinds the eye of his reason and pretends to see by an eye of faith. He makes little images of notion and some atoms dance before him, but he is not guided by the light nor instructed by the proposition, but sees like a man in a sleep…..He that speaks against his own reason speaks against his own conscience, and therefore it is certain no man serves God with a good conscience that serves Him against his reason.”
-Isaac Watts; whose book on logic was used for over a hundred years at Yale, Princeton, and Oxford Universities.
Hey Eric!
Thanks for reading. It seems like you’re misunderstanding a big part of the argument that I’m making (the fault is semantic and thus mine), so I’ll try to clarify. Modernity was based entirely on reason with no recognition that that form of discourse was a type of metanarrative. Postmodernism dislikes this. However, since faith (by the definition of the word itself) can not be reached entirely by reason, Postmodernism is okay with it. Reason is not antithetical to faith in the least, and I misspoke to say that faith isn’t “based” in reason. There’s quite a bit of reason/logic involved, but the fact of the matter is that reason and logic can’t take us the entire way. The leap of faith that still has to be made, and the presence of the leap is why Postmodernity permits, per its standards, the existence of theology. The rest of the article moves from there.
Apologies on the murky wording!
Kevin
Interesting article, but with many unexplored assumptions. Obviously, we can use whatever metanarrative appeals to us at the moment, and do. However a meta-meta narrative demands that we admit what we are doing and assume responsibility. That brings up the problem I don’t think you have seen: what is, or are, the criterion for putting forth our narrative as some sort of helpful, moral belief. As such, your schema remains groundless, allowing almost anything to be put forward as true without leaving any room for judging one better in that circumstance as better than another. Certainly, since Nietzsche and Wittgenstein we can talk of poetic or artistic, or logical truth, but we still need to spell out our criteria. Face it, some truths are more true than others. I propose something close to utilitarianism cross bread with Jesus (and others) that is most true which reasonably can be held to serve life and equality. These are to me meta-values. No values are possible without them (neo-Kantian). The virgin birth, as well as the physical resurrection, are beautiful metaphors but can be used in very destructive ways.