Postmodernity vs. the Gospel?

The first of five engagements around James K.A. Smiths "Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?"

An exchange over “Who’s Afraid?” with David E. Fitch, planting pastor of Life on the Vine, the Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology at Northern Seminary,  and author of The Great Give Away.

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churchandpomo:  In the introduction of the Church and Postmodern Culture Series, Smith writes that "the series will provide accessible introductions to postmodern thought with the specific aim of exploring its impact on ecclesial practice."  There is a constant criticism made against those who dabble and/or dive into postmodernity, that you have substituted postmodernity for the gospel.  We see this criticism from two different Wilson's: (Douglas) Wilson on James K.A. Smith, and (Jonathan R.) Wilson on David E. Fitch.  How do you respond to this critique of your work and Smith's?

David E. Fitch: When it comes to engaging culture, evangelicals are captivated/horrified by “contextualization.” Whether it is the enduring influence of H. Richard Niebuhr over us, or our endemic modernism which inevitably privatizes our faith and makes it into an idea to be “translated” into a given culture, we evangelicals are obsessed with contextualizing the gospel as a “message” into a particular culture. To think that the person and work of Jesus Christ demands that we ourselves embody a politic in the form of the church with given social practices that engage society as an embodied presence, is completely alien to the evangelical mind. Therefore, whenever Jamie or I use the postmodern critique to expose the weaknesses of current church practice as it has been captivated by modernity, evangelical authors automatically assume that we are trying to contextualize the gospel to this new cultural phenomenon - postmodernity. In both our cases, they couldn’t be more wrong.

Although I have nothing against contextualization per se, Jamie nor I have this in mind as we present our various takes on postmodernity as a critique of current American church practice. We are both simply trying to unveil what the critique of postmodernity reveals about both our current culture and our current church practice. We are using the postmodern authors to unveil the huge shortcomings of current church practices all because of our indebtedness to modernism and all its manifestations. The response we both offer, however, is not to contextualize a church to postmodernity, but rather to reinvigorate an ecclesiology for our times. As Jamie states “it might just be these Parisians who can help us be the church.” (p.23).

c&p: Smith notes that many practitioners (say within the Emerging Church) give an approving nod to postmodern philosophers, but rarely move beyond slogans or trite summaries.  After tipping a hat to philosophy, many claim that everyday life needs attention.  Why is engaging with postmodern philosophy important to you, and how do you see it hitting the roads of 'real' life?

DF: It is ironic that the church which turns out to be most modern, the church which turns out to carry out protestant liberal strategies in terms of ecclesiology, is the evangelical church, the version of American Christianity from which both Jamie and myself come and remain aligned with. The fact that many evangelicals when they read this may be dumbfounded by that statement is simply the evidence of how little we evangelicals understand about our own indebtedness to modern assumptions, politics and way of life. To me, this confusion extends even to many in the emerging church. As I have said elsewhere, protestant liberalism and evangelical fundamentalism are two sides of the same coin.  And so it is odd that many of our emerging church pastors, as well as many of our most modernist mega church pastors, all seek to engage social justice on terms that only make sense in a society where a modernist politics still make sense. Many of these pastors put forth ideas about kingdom theology, social justice, and engagement with culture that are as old as Tillich, Niebuhr, Raushenbush etc. They somehow present these ideas as new? Yet these are all failed theologies both in terms of practice and in terms of the postmodern philosophers and post foundational theologians we all seem to be reading (and in the case of Jamie, myself, and the emergent writers seem to find benefit from).

This is why it is so important to understand these postmodern philosophers, thinkers and critiques at such a time as this. It is into these situations that I believe the insights of postmodern authors on the issues of subjectivity, the Other, democracy and capitalism, and the nature language and reality are so powerful for understanding the very issues we must engage as a social presence in the world where the modern consensus is heading into an implosion called “late capitalism.” For this reason I believe the emergent authors, the mega church pastors, the Christian church that still exists, has so much to learn and understand from the postmodern critique. This is why what Jamie has done in his own book “Who’s Afraid of PostModernism?” and what he has done in creating this series of books is so important.

c&p: At the end of chapter one, Smith, laying out the contours of his appropriation of postmodernism, notes that we must shift from an apologetics of demonstration (reason) to one of proclamation (through ecclesial witness).  Why do people get so upset with Smith and others for saying that "the church doesn't have an apologetic; it is an apologetic”?

DF:  Many of the “younger evangelicals” are afraid of anything that smacks of withdrawal from culture. They were raised in a brand of fundamentalism that preached “separation” from culture, withdrawal. All culture is bad! They don’t want to go back to anything close to that and I don’t blame them. To say “let the church be the church” as Stanley Hauerwas has made famous and Jamie reiterates here with a new twist in “Who’s Afraid?” scares these ex-evangelicals. They suspect this theological turn could be used as an excuse to withdraw from the culture.

Let me allay any fears. Jamie is not suggesting anything of the sort. Rather he is suggesting, along with myself, and certainly spearheaded by Hauerwas (although Jamie is more Reformed than either Hauerwas or myself) that the church as an embodied presence is the social strategy in the new fragmented worlds of declining modernity. The church becomes the means of a living breathing display of justice from which we engage the world with an all the more compelling justice that comes out of God’s work in the church. From such a social display, our ability to support justice efforts and even know which justice efforts to join hands with is made more possible because we have such an embodied justice to live and discern out of. But by possessing a justice that is a politic of the cross (Yoder), by making justice more than something we do, but indeed something we are, we are able to remove justice from being a mere idea or concept and instead allow justice of God to become part of our way of life in the ways we live and engage the world. In fragmented modernity, this is only possible if we take the church seriously as a politic with integrity of its own.   

c&p: Lastly, do you have any final comments on your reaction to Jamie’s book?

DF:  “Postmodern” is easily the most misunderstood word in American church. In addition, postmodern philosophy is largely inaccessible to average pastor or M.Div educated reader. Many authors have written primers for postmodernism that have failed to do anything to alleviate this situation. It is simply hard to find anyone who has intimate familiarity with the primary sources yet will take the time to write in terms that all of us practitioners can understand. Before Jamie’s book I thought this was impossible.

But I say congratulations to Jamie because he has done a marvelous job at introducing Foucault, Lyotard and, yes, Derrida in an accessible way. Since its release, I have used this book in all my classes on church in the postmodern context at Northern Seminary. But Jamie does not stop at helping us understand these three seminal authors of Continental postmodern philosophy. He gives us a wonderful engaging response which helps us see the compelling case postmodernity makes way for, the case for the church to return being the church, a social strategy, an embodied presence in the world, all of which is sadly lacking in the evangelical world from whence both Jamie and I come.   
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Disclaimer: For those sniffing out a publishing conspiracy, we should note that, yes, both David Fitch and James K.A. Smith are authors published by Baker.  But I will repeat that churchandpomo.org is not merely a front for pushing Baker books. 

Comments

[Rob]

"As I have said elsewhere, protestant liberalism and evangelical fundamentalism are two sides of the same coin. And so it is odd that many of our emerging church pastors, as well as many of our most modernist mega church pastors, all seek to engage social justice on terms that only make sense in a society where a modernist politics still make sense. Many of these pastors put forth ideas about kingdom theology, social justice, and engagement with culture that are as old as Tillich, Niebuhr, Raushenbush etc. They somehow present these ideas as new? Yet these are all failed theologies both in terms of practice and in terms of the postmodern philosophers and post foundational theologians we all seem to be reading (and in the case of Jamie, myself, and the emergent writers seem to find benefit from)."

Interesting. I understand where you are coming from in reference to Murphy's work, with the "coin" being foundationalism. That work (Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism) was a little intense for me, so I hope I can ask this question: How does an understanding of that tie into the idea that many modern, including emerging, pastors are putting forth ideas about kingdom theology, social justice, etc that are failed foundationalist theologies? Can you expound on that a little more? I thought Smith's book was excellent by the way, and am looking forward to these conversations.

[Eric Lee]

This will be more of a question in general to David Fitch, Jamie Smith, or whomever.

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As stated above, we hear cries of 'contextualization,' cries of 'sectarianism,' or cries of whatever people think they see and name as offensive or contrary to the gospel. Yet, as I think Fitch, Smith, Hauerwas, et. al. argue, it really is none of the above but it is a truly engaged _presence_ -- politic -- that exists lovingly as the Church.

Something I constantly struggle with, though, is the explanation of it. It seems to be almost the same as from talking to a non-believer about Christ as it does to a Christian who embraces modernity full force. In both cases it seems like the 'nonbelievers' won't really ever understand until they have already crossed the divide. How else can we explain the fact that so many who disagree with Smith, et. al., like Doug Wilson, just display that they don't get it?

This seems similar to what Kierkegaard was talking about in his _Philosophical Fragments_ when he was talking about those living in untruth: they never know what they are looking for because if they don't have truth, they won't know what to look for, and if they already have truth, then they obviously wouldn't be looking for it anymore.

Therefore, we can explain in as detailed a manner as we can muster in books and on blogs, and plant mustard seeds as much as we have the strength to in love, but on another level, mustn't this stuff truly be lived out? (and yes, I know that speech is a part of life) And then, isn't the decision -- the 'halt' as Kierkegaard talks about it elsewhere -- isn't that up to the person and God?

Also, I must only sadly ask general questions for now because I haven't yet had the opportunity to read Jamie's book (sorry!). Anyone, of course, is free to take a hack at any of this.

Peace,

Eric

[Adam P. Newton]

Rob's point/question/thought is what also stood out to me as well, seeing that I was raised in a fundamentalist (actually a oneness/modalist) Pentecostal church, worked for 6 years in that bastion of evangelical Christianity (the Christian bookstore), and have become someone who is decently versed in postmodern philosophy (having read all of the "primers" that have been released in the past 5-7 years). I know what it's like to personally be engaged in the war between both sides of the "coin" -- my political/social beliefs of my adulthood conflicting with the religious beliefs that I had learned throughout childhood and adolescence.

This is a question that many people that I know in the emergent church that I attend (and where I serve on staff) ask themselves quite often. How does the church actually become the apologetic it is supposed to be? We serve the community through various ways and means, and do so quite organically, with members creating their own chances to get into the surrounding community to live & serve. Yet we still have to resist the impulse to find space in the budget for "ministries" & "services" for the church members and the community around us.

And then there is the large contingent of people who are either exiles from the large evangelical churches in the area or just think that the worship & preaching are cool & different. How does one best inculcate the idea/vision that the church should just be the church, and not be some provider of social services under the guise of being the church? How does one best encourage others to get beyond just being with the people of the church and actually be the church of Jesus to people in our lives?

I have the same questions as Ron, especially on the -logy v. -praxis level. What are we looking at? The last thing I want to do is just start passing out Smith's book and declaring, "READ!" Although, I do like that option -- people don't read theology enough....

[joel hunter]

If I may shamelessly plug a personal hero of mine? Cal Seerveld's thought addresses some of these concerns, esp those voiced by Adam; namely, a particularly burdensome feature of modernity that we walk around with is a profound distrust of "the" imagination. Cultivating what C.S. calls "imaginativity" may be one way to practically challenge one another to "get it." The modernistic beauty-aesthetic interferes with reading anything literarily, be it the Bible or postmodern philosophy. Reading isn't enough, it really matters how we read and whether we've taken the time to aesthetically mature (no snobbery intended).

[geoff holsclaw]

Adam asked,
"How does one best inculcate the idea/vision that the church should just be the church, and not be some provider of social services under the guise of being the church? How does one best encourage others to get beyond just being with the people of the church and actually be the church of Jesus to people in our lives?"

I think this is a very important question, which gets to the heart of what Fitch was articulating (and also Smith).

And as Eric ask, What is that 'eureka' moment, that epiphany, when you see the different between having an apologitic and being the apologitic, with joel offering 'imaginativity' as a means towards getting it.

Of course, knowing how someone 'gets it' is an enduring philosophical problem (see Wittgenstien in Philosophical Investigations).

Putting aside trying to help douglas wilsom get it, what about our communities. Of course we can't hang out book on postmodernism to congregants, so how do we help them get it?

[Andrew Walker]

I would largely agree that the connotation of the word "postmodern" already provides the prime issue to deal with, which is re-definition in what seems as the usual evangelical retreatist mindset. Also, amongst the emergent blogs, the typification of "postmodernism" is still painstakingly being defined, and ignoring the essential need for applicable and understandble praxis.

[RODNEY NEILL]

The idea of the church being the embodiment of justice,love etc in society sounds like an idealistic pipe dream and completely divorced from reality when compared to my experiences of the church in Northern Ireland. In NI we have around 50% of Catholics and 30% of Protestants attending church which is completely different to the West European trend yet our society is still filled with religious hatred and bigotry even 10 years after the peace process!! In many ways we are an embarassment to the Christian witness.
I would love to see a church as decribed above but to me it will never exist and will only be a reminder of how far short reality of church is compared to what it shold be.

NI is only beginning to be affected by postmodernity so I appreciate that your situation is America is very different to mine - my background is I am 46, have a job in the goverment and after many years out of the church as a disillusioned ex-believer I had a renewal of faith experience 3 years ago. I am a keen follower of the ec conversation!

I do not mean to sound so defeatist - I am only trying to be honest.

Rodney

[Christopher Roussel]

This is a question for D. Fitch...
What is your opinion on the earlier works of Stan Grenz (such as A Primer on Postmodernism) and his collaborative work with John franke (e.g. Beyond Foundationalism)? Also, what of his last work, The Named God?
It seems to me that Grenz has been especially pushing for theology to move into postmodern philosophical circles, while remaining "faithful" to the Christian traditions (i.e. Reformed, Anglican, Catholic, etc).
Also, i have a question for the group (and especially Jamie). So we have a book now that removes many of the myths Christianity has associated with the more known postmodern philosophers (Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard), but what about those before postmodernism that are (in many ways) foundational to D,F,&L such as Heidegger and Nietzsche? i've noticed that many Christians, when reading Heidegger, assume that Being means God, but Heidegger has said pretty explicitely that that is not the case. i've also seen may Christians take just the mention of Nietzsche and assume he's some atheistic lunatic (which may be pretty accurate as far as the lunatic goes). Yet, it seems that no philosopher reads Nietzsche that way (Heidegger, Jaspers, Vattimo, Badiou, etc). Should theology in (or after) postmodernity try to resolve these issues, or should it try to sidestep them completely? In either case, how do you think it should?
OK, i'll stop there for now.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

David Fitch is currently teaching a week long intensive course, but I'm sure he will make an appearance soon.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Rodney, you raise a great point. In many ways it resonates with the legacy of White Racism in America and the Church's complicity in it.

I can't speak for NI, but in the American situation, the church had followed a Constinitian model (of both trying to rule politically and rationally via strategic alliances with Enlightenment theories of the State and Reason). Because of this, the Church STOPPED being its own politic, its own apologetic, and out sourced itself to the State and Enlightenment Reason.

As you've said, this EMBODIMENT of justice, or we might says, the embodiment of Christ for the world, isn't a reality. But maybe it isn't working because we've allowed the Church to be embodied by other SPIRITS? I would say that for many, entering into the postmodern critique is a type of Exorcism, getting rid of the Spirit of this Age. (Of course if you equal Constantinianism and the Church, as Douglas Wilson does, then you don't find any of this convincing...).

Maybe theologians of the postmodern persuasion could become the Exorcists of the Church? Is that not what the Old Testament Prophets were?

[A.B. Dada]

I'm not sure anyone is using the "coin" analog properly -- something that I've seen in both the political debate world as well as the spiritual debate world.

The coin is not liberal on one side and conservative on another. That is a ridiculous analogy as both liberals and conservatives (in both political and spiritual debate) generally seek only one thing from the get-go: self. No matter how often they capitalize He or quote scripture, from a praxeological standpoint the ego is what drives the debate, rather than what God intends for us. No matter how much they vocally worry "about the Children" or "the elderly" or "the gays" or "the Asians" they're still out for self, first and foremost.

The coin is two sides or faces, yes. One face has two sides to it: the left and the right sides. Liberal and conservative. This face of the coin is what I call the praxeological face, or the "what will I gain face?" The liberal and conservative sides of this face are both extremely pro-self without any regard for Truth and free will. Speak of justice? There is no human justice, that ended about 2000 years ago. Speak of human truth? There is no human truth, that ended about the same time.

The other face of the coin is the freedom side -- the freedom that comes from what God had to do in order to fix the trash that humanity became.

You can't win that praxeological battle from either a modern or post-modern perspective. No superpastor of a mega-church is worth his weight in blessings if he has 20,000 people attending who are not disciples. The Word is not met.

Before Jesus, God was about groups of people -- us versus them mentality. After Jesus, God is about the individual and free will. The groups are now the garbage, the individual is now available to receive enlightenment through realizing that the illogic of God comes from the lack of freeing oneself from judgement and law. Love and forgiveness are the anti-thesis of judgement and law.

Liberal? Conservative? Only God has the opportunity to pick a title. For everyone else, the mirror continues to reflect who intends to gain from the debate.

[David Fitch]

This is such a good conversation it hardly needs my chiming in. Nonetheless, if I may just respond to one thing here and then add some comments tomorrow.
From Rob - "How does an understanding of that (PL & EF being two sides of same coin) tie into the idea that many modern, including emerging, pastors are putting forth ideas about kingdom theology, social justice, etc that are failed foundationalist theologies?"... I see both protestant liberal (mainline) social approaches and evangelical personal salvation approaches as built upon the modernist faith in the Cartesian cogito, Kantian transcendental ego,and derivatives thereof. This leads to modernist framework which says that justice is an idea /concept that can be known outside of a narrative location in time and history. In essence, this enables justice of God to be carried out irrespective of the church's existence, and for that matter (for evangelicals) people can get "saved" irrespective of the church. This can not make the same sense after postmodernity's de centered subjectivity as decsribed so well by Jamie using Derrida and Foucault. Based in the same foundations, both evangelical fundamentalists(EF)and protestant liberals (PL)see the government as an appropriate extension of this work of justice from Christians into the world. This however also requires foundationalist assumptions about justice being a concept that exists outside of space and time,and historical contingency based in a metanarrative. Using Jamie's trilogy of author's again, Lyotard has been the master of undoing this. There is no justice outside out a narrative born out in history. Yet both EF and PL act as if we can engage government for the promotion of God's justice in Christ irrespective of the church. This is what I mean by social strategies that are foundationalist to the core. Oddly, I see many emergent writers falling into these same traps despite their significant reading of post modern philosophy. As I have said before, at the end of modernity, Christians simply cannot engage the world with truth unless it is embodied in a social presense, a politic. "...until we have a church that lives justice, it’s just Jim Wallis arguing against Jerry Falwell." Yet ecclessiocentricism scares alot of emergent authors for the reasons I mentioned above. This is definitely a discussion for the future of any emerging churchy.
Blessings all .. this is great ... I'll connect some more tommorrow. I've been teaching a week long intensive at Northern Seminary on "Church in Postmodern Context" where we have been using Jamie's book among others.

[James K.A. Smith]

I'm really honored to have David engage this little book, especially because I think _The Great Giveaway_ could be read as something of a companion volume. In his book, David, as a reflective pastor, gets down to the nitty gritty of the church's ministry and labor in ways that I could only hint at. So, while this might fuel any conspiracy theories about churchandpomo.org being a marketing front (!), David's book would be a really great follow-up to _Who's Afraid_, especially for those engaged in ministry.

I especially appreciate David's point here about "contextualization." Neither of us are taking about "updating" the faith or making the church "relevant" to contemporary culture, and thus advocating everybody buy a ticket for the postmodern bandwagon. Instead, the point is that engaging the postmodern critique of modernity can be a catalyst and occasion for the (especially North American) church to re-think it's own capitulation to modernity. So the engagement with postmodern thought is a kind of therapy, but not, in fact, a prescription.

[Rob]

I have a question about "contextualization" in regards to orthodoxy. In reading Smith's take on Derrida, much is made of the idea that there is no "pure" Gospel. There is no Gospel that is free from historical, cultural, and language constructs, and that doesn't require interpretation. "There is nothing outside of the text" a la Derrida means that there is no "pure" objective world that we can utlimately reach once we get past the limitations of language, context, and interpretation. It's "interpretation all the way down". Even the Gospel, as I said, comes embodied within constructs of history, culture, and language. So, my question is....how can there be such a thing as "orthodoxy" (small "o") then? Aren't we referring back to some "pure" Gospel to try and defend false claims against it? I think alot of criticisms against contextualization are from evangelicals who still believe that there is a "pure" Gospel that we as "contextualizers" are ruining. I'm torn, because I tend to agree with Derrida and Smith, but yet Smith himself claims to uphold orthodoxy. Any thoughts on this now, or will this develop more as this conversation develops?

[Andy]

Rob,

The postmodern condition - rather than undermining orthodoxy - might actually allow the church to reclaim a greater orthodoxy in that it allows room for proclaiming the Biblical story and the Gospel. Rather than trying to prove elements of our tradition (or doctrine) to be true vis a vis the scientific method - we simply claim and proclaim the perspective of God's people through time. We don't need to shy away from admitting it's an interpretation - we claim that to be true!

From this view, our orthodoxy is dependent on the degree to which our message and actions echo and extend the larger Biblical message into our current contexts.

Orthopraxy may also become as important as orthodoxy...as people will look to see the impact our message has on our lives before buying into our interpretation.

[joel hunter]

I'll take a stab at your line of questions, Rob. If we think of the Gospel as something like a Platonic Form (which "pure" or "essence" might connote), then we're going to get philosophically stuck in some kind of scientific mode of thought when defending orthodoxy. That is, we will make apologetics the central task of the church. And by apologetics (in its modern sense), I mean the study and application of rigorous argumentation on behalf of propositional formulations of christian belief (which the scientifically loaded 'ics' suffix suggests to us, post 16th century). A parallel discipline would be hermeneutics, again understood scientifically, as the skillful craft of interpreting biblical texts. So the scientific determination and presentation of orthodoxy already implies some theoretical standpoints regarding language, truth, meaning, and so on. As far as it goes, this can be a valuable contribution to lived faith.

Now, once this way of determining orthodoxy is challenged and even subverted by critique of the notion of scientific objectivity that underlies the tasks of constructing good arguments and formulating an unassailable arrangement of propositions, then how are we to understand what 'orthodoxy' means? For starters, I would suggest that we have too narrow a conception of apologetics and hermeneutics. The questions that they seek to answer have changed. For example, the task of a scientific hermeneutics can be summed up by the question "How are we to read this written text?" (in the margins you can just make out a correspondence theory of truth haunting it). Now, however, heremeneutics takes into account much different scenery and asks something like this: "How do we make ourselves understood and how do we understand anything at all?" I'll leave this thread here, but you can probably already detect that such questions do not permit us any more a clean separation between orthodoxy and orthopraxy.

"Contextualization," then, I would characterize as the struggle and coming to existential terms with one's changed horizons. Sorry for the jargon, but by 'horizon' I mean the totality of all that a person can realize by thought and action at a given time in history and in a given culture. At the risk of making this comment unreadably long, consider this thought experiment: suppose its 40 AD Palestine, and Peter and Paul have been commissioned to formulate a creed for use by churches in instructing their catechumens. Would the two creeds have been identical (according to the rigor of scientific analysis)? Grant me that they would not. Then what? Peter and Paul meet at an inn to hash out their formulations. In a word, they engage in dialogue. Let's listen in on it. Is it going to be a debate, i.e., are Peter and Paul trying to "win" by proving that one is "correct" and the other is "wrong?" Unlikely (well, Paul maybe... :-). I think the better insight into what they're up to is seeking, pursuing, striving to learn what is the case. It will be a conversation that resembles a dance more than combat. Now, here's the rub: is this just a discussion involving the personal subjectivities of Peter and Paul? I would say not at all. Present in the dialogue is a very real sense of objectivity; they are discussing *something*, something that is true even if Peter and Paul are conditioned by their language and their traditions such that they cannot terminate their dialogue in a timeless, horizonless, orthodox formulation of that true something. It goes ever on. But the something that it is about, what Gadamer calls *Sache*, is objective in this non-idealist sense. While we cannot overcome the historical and cultural dimensions in which any understanding is gained, the better apologetic, the better hermeneutic, will be the one that opens up new and unexpected vistas and paths than the context or horizon that bounded us before the dialogue or conversation began. If we think of our faith as having "content," then I think such a model is more helpful than the scientific one which handles the "content" as non-reducible propositional bullets that are atomic answers to questions or solutions to problems.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

Joel,
great response.

especailly as we venture into the later arguments of Smith's book, these issues of orthodoxy, hermeneutics/interpretation, and the status of 'objectivity' will be drawn out...I hope!

concerning 'orthodoxy' (that slippery term), it is so often hitched to greek understanding of 'right doctrine/thoughts', but really it is about correct praise or worship. Orthodoxy is concern with 'what do we mean (don't mean) when we worshp Christ as the Risen LORD=God?' The early church worshipped Christ, why? What the church deemed as good/true/helpful answers became 'orthodox' and the bad/false/harmful answers were deemed heresy. (don't you love reductionism!!!!)

[DavidFitch]

Dear impleri,
I have always found Stanley Grenz, helpful,a good systematizer and a wonderful synthesizer, but ultimately unsatisfying for me as to his appropriations and engagments with the primary texts. His "primer," if I remember it correctly, was only helpful in the earliest stages of learning and somewhat unhelpful as a bridge to contintal philosophy. I love Stanley G., but my opinion is that Jamie's book here (and I am not just a being a schill for Smith's book) is a significant improvement over "the primer."
and to Joel .. wonderful summary .. made this blog post worth reading.
Blessings DF

[James K.A. Smith]

To pick up on the Grenz question: I have found it helpful to go back to some discussions around Vatican II in order to make some sense about the situation of evangelicals vis-a-vis postmodernity. (We're not just interested in evangelicalism, but nonetheless...)

One could say that before and during the renewal that was Vatican II, there were two movements or schools of thought about the situation of the Church in the modern world: the "aggiornamento" party, who saw the need for the church to be "updated" for the modern world, and the "ressourcement" folks who saw the question of the church's relationship to modern culture as a way to "retrieve" the ancient resources and practices of the church's life. (This had the most impact on the Vatican II document, "Gaudium et Spes," on the Church in the Modern World.)

One could see something similar in current discussions about our relation to postmodernity (and this goes back to David's point re: contextualization): some take an aggiornamento stance and would say that the church needs to engage postmodernity in order to "update" the church and/or theology to be "relevant" for the contemporary world; others [like me] would advocate a ressourcement strategy and would see the engagement with postmodernity as an occasion for retrieving pre-modern practices, etc.

My hesitation with Grenz, whose work I still appreciate, is that there is at least a side of it that sounds aggiornamento-ish, whereas I think we would do better with a ressourcement approach.

[Adam P. Newton]

Wow....

I've just now had a chance to come back after barely 36 hours away and all of this great commentary, thought, queries, and discussion has occurred. From 3 comments to 20; I get excited just thinking about what everyone has been writing. I just wish that the font were larger....

Anyway, I simply have this to say -- I love context. I just have to have context and the more the better. I know that there will always be issues upon issues with contextualization and how that applies to the hermeneutics of any given passage or the interpretation of that passage, but, to me, with my social sciences background, there is no interpretation without context.

As I previously wrote, I theologically grew up in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church that would grab onto either a) the same key sections of verses that most preachers and evangelists preached/screamed about most Sundays & revival meetings. Couple that with all of the right-wing political media that I absorbed for 4 years in High School and you'll have a guy who really didn't understand what the nuances and depth of putting things into their proper socio-historical context was really all about.

And then, to the disdain of my parents and spiritual leaders, I actually began to read the history of my nation and the general world around us and I found out that there has always been so much more going on behind any given concept or bit of "conventional wisdom/knowledge" that I had ever been made aware of my pastor and preferred radio talk show host. I began to see the shades of grey that truly exist in this world and then began to interpret the Scriptures and contemporary politics through the lens of this idea called "context" -- history truly started to have meaning for me (beyond just memorizing names, dates, & places).

Thus, as non-academic as this post will sound, much of what I have taken from Smith's book and other postmodern writers (whether "emergent" or general philosophers) is that there is some sort of Big Picture out there (I loved the passage in Smith's book concerning the refutation of the misunderstanding over metanarratives), one that cannot be ignored when delving into any text, much less the one that is the Bible. Thus, while evangelicals have ignored history when reading Scripture and while liberals have used history to bludgeon Scripture, there is historical precedent to contextualization, whether we're looking at the teachings/writings of Jewish rabbis, Paul's injunctions to "be all things to all people", or St. Francis' attempts to explicitly live out Jesus' example, the people of God have always been encouraged to not ignore their past, but embrace and LEARN from their history.

To me, context is everything; without it, we're just going to all proof-text each other to death....

[Dale]

Hi all,

I realized a bit ago that my "trackbacks" are pushing comments down on this post, so that all my comments and posts on this post appear first, and that is a little embarassing. If the webmasters want to flip the order of the trackbacks and comments, that would be OK with me. Anyway, as you might could tell from my posts, I am quite taken with issues I sense this post is raising (that of "given social practices that engage society an embodies prescence"

Dale

[Jason Hesiak]

Joel,

Where did you get this horizon talk (I think I've heard mention from Heiddegher, and I hear Gadamer talks of it, but I've not read Gadamer)? Very interesting to me. When I think of all this context/history/ect. stuff, my imagination goes to the horizon without anyone's mentioning it. I am an Architect. I think of a quote from a favorite architect of mine, Sverre Fehn of Norway in describing the most famous villa by "the fist modern architect", Andrea Palladio, which is square and whose 4 sides look the same (finished 1571: http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/rotonda/wholeangle.jpg):

"At that time man had begun to loose his sense of mystery in relation to the horizon. The horizon was no longer the edge of man's world, nor any longer the place where things apepared into his world. The earth had become a globe, so, upon visiting Palladio's Villa and having a conversation with him, he instructed that I imagine someone setting off from one of the four faces of his Villa, walking all the way around the globe, and mysteriously coming back upon the very same face staring back at me." (this was very much a paraphrase)

Elsewhere (http://www.archdesign.vt.edu/faculty/pdf/Weiner-EAAE-Essay.pdf#search=%22Sverre%20Fehn%2C%20time%2C%20man%2C%20mystery%2C%20horizon%22), "The idea of horizon is important to the constructive thought of architect Sverre Fehn. The fall from grace of the horizon Fehn detected has important implications for both the making and teaching of architecture. When the world was imagined as flat it had an imagined end and the horizon marked this condition. When this picture gave way to the world as a globe, '...the horizon ceased to be the end of the world.' The development of artificial perspective further facilitated the appropriation and loss of crucial archaic and existential dimensions of horizon. The idea of a natural horizon as room providing safe harbor for other rooms was lost. For Fehn the essence of the idea of horizon is in the roots of a tree '...as they burst through the ground into the light.'"

I think of Psalm 1 :) Just some "funds for the imagianation" (a phrase from David's blog), I suppose, as OUR horizon is here in a sense the church. As humans we need a ground to stand on for our heads to point toward heaven rather than floating around in Neverland.

Also, as a brief note of my 2 cents, I find it to be a very itneresting kind of ironic joke from God's sense of humor (or judgement ?) that things (and the world itself) become objectifiably closed (even the minds of the screaming pastors and media moguls about the same few verses over and over again) the moment the horizon (or our context, or what-have-you) is either unending or lost. The world closes when man opens it. It opens when God speaks.

[Geoff Holsclaw]

jason,
I just loved the connection you made between the architechual loss of horizon, and what Joel said concerning horizons of interpretation. Accord to this little connect, just as the horizon was being lost as a way of understanding/forming our material existence, philosophers were bringing it back as a way of understand our existential situation. And of course later Hiedeggar was trying to bring the two together with all his talk of 'dwelling' with the 'fourfold' of 'earth-sky-morals-gods'.

(note to those not in the know: Heidegger (horizon of Being) and Gadamer (horizon of text) made 'horizon' famous although others i'm sure used it before them).

and impleri,
to the question you ask about why no one has written a primer on Nietzsche or Hiedeggar? Well, maybe b/c their slogans were not as catchy? But really, there have already been many 'death of God' theologies, which may have shifted over into 'deconstructive' theologies. and people like Vattimo are certainly trying to give 'nihilism' a good name.

For Hiedeggar, i would say Tillich and Bultmann already assimlated him (though maybe in the worst ways).

You end with, "Should theology in (or after) postmodernity try to resolve these issues, or should it try to sidestep them completely?" I'm not entirely clear as to which issues you mean, so I (we?) can't really answer.

[jonny]

just back from holiday and am breathless by the amount on this supposed 'slog' - ok it's in the comments i know...

a couple of thoughts/questions - i am a bit confused by the line being drawn between contextualisation and embodiment of the gosepl in the church. isn't the embodiment in the church the hermeneutic of the gospel that newbigin talked about? which i'd always thought to be what contextualisation leads to?... i work for a mission agency in the uk with a lot of experience in cross cultural mission so the contextual stuff is a rich vein imho... anyway help me understand the difference or why you seem negative about contextualisation...

the second thought is really another query about a line being drawn by jamie between the turning back (ressourcment) and the updating (sorry i keep looking back but can never remember that word you use!). isn't this a bit of a false dilemma? can't you do both at the same time? my own view is that both are needed at the same time. i think the practice of alternative worship in the uk is an example of doing both things at the same time in creative and imaginitive ways. the metaphor of improvisation has been helpful here - because it requires the tradition to improvise out of faithfully but frees up new possibilities. i understand the fear of 'relevance' - a dommed strategy if it's just for relevance sake. but if we opt instead for premodern isn't that equally problematic?

i see there is a future book in your series on improvisation which i have to say i am excited about...

cheers

[Jason Hesiak]

Jonny, I appreciate much what you said. Even agree, actually (to the degree that I am able based on my limited knowledge of the situation). Just want to point out that I think Jamie wasn't so much drawing a line for himself between looking back and foward, as saying that this is what has happened historically. Based on this history, on a very practical level, he struggles with how to reconcile the two (which is exactly what you are saying is possible). I also recognize, Johnny, that you are trying to, in a sense, push us foward, in a way. I don't want to stop that. Just didn't want to watch passively what I percieve to be an easily cleared misunderstanding or miscommunication...

And thanks Geoff for both the acknowledgement and the helpful clarification/pointing me in a direction based on my question. i.e. thanks for answering my question. I'm glad someone got something out of it/liked it.

Here is the ACTUAL quote from Fehn (funnily, in the context of this conversation with "fragmentation" as the background, you will see how badly I hacked it to bits): "I once built a house that everyone said took inspiration from Palladio. But, honestly, Palladio did not occur to me then. Nevertheless, I did meet with him later. Observing the plan of my house, he said to me, 'The Rotunda, you see, was a game...In those days, the horizon had lost its sense of mystery for us. It had come as a shock to all to discover that the earth was really a finite sphere that one could measure. Therefore, I decided to transform it into a labyrinth by building a house with four identical facades. If you leave the house facing west and continue all the way around the earth, you will reach the same facade you started from."

Jason

[Cynthia R. Nielsen]

Jonny,

I think that the improvisation analogy is infinitely rich. Jazz improvisers are well-aware that they are not autonomous subjects and that they work within and are indebted to a tradition (or even multiple traditions). Part of their training is to purposely imitate those who have come before them who have made significant contributions to the tradition. For example, it is common for a jazz musician to learn solos of certain jazz masters so well that can play, e.g., Charlie Parker or John Coltrane-style on call. Yet, it is also important to develop one’s own sound which helps to move the tradition forward (again the “newer” styles/traditions are not abandoning tradition but are situated within tradition and dependent upon those who have gone before them while also developing new sounds that are attentive to a kind of historical unfolding of the tradition which recognizes that we cannot simply return to an older style/tradition, lest stagnation and an a kind of denial and downgrading of historical movement occur). So when new players re-interpret a traditional tune, they do not seek to replicate a piece in a univocal fashion, producing in a sense a “zerox” copy of the original. Rather, they creatively re-interpret the original melody (and harmony) of the piece such that it is clearly recognizable, yet it speaks to the culture of the day. Perhaps we could say that just as jazz improvisation and re-interpretations are not free-for-alls in which anything goes (or else how would we recognize a re-interpretation of say the tune “All the Things You Are” as “All the Things You Are”?), so too our re-interpretation or re-articulation of Christianity (with a desire to engage postmodernism and “pillage the Egyptian gold” as Smith says) is tied to the Christian metanarrative (not in the “modern” sense of metanarrative) of creation, fall, redemption in Christ, and final consummation in Christ. This would seem to give a good deal of latitude to our re-articulation, yet there would also be constraints that would help stave off the inclination to move in the “updating the church” to make it “relevant” direction.

Cheers,
Cynthia

[joel hunter]

Jason, you asked, "Where did you get this horizon talk (I think I've heard mention from Heiddegher, and I hear Gadamer talks of it, but I've not read Gadamer)?"

My cursory usage of 'horizon' in the above comment hardly goes beyond Kant. 'Horizon', even in Kant, is just the ordinary word we're all familiar with and retains its orientation toward its spatial sense (although Kant should be credited with conceiving of 'horizon' as a pregnant concept for logical and epistemological problematics). But it is the phenomenologist Husserl who is the key thinker of 'horizon'. In addition to its static conception, he develops its genetic aspect, its temporal dimension and thus the problem of understanding existence through time, i.e., objective endurance. So it is the Husserlian explication of the notion of the temporal horizon that is an important way (historically speaking) to grasp the complex of problems involved with the question that Rob raised earlier: what is the "essence" of the Gospel that endures today and all over the world from its initial historical and cultural locatedness. If scientific objectivity isn't possible (or desirable) to determine it, then how are we to be sure that we're talking about the same thing cross-culturally and across historical epochs? Is there another sense of "objectivity" and should we call it something else to avoid confusion? Since Husserl's transcendental phenomenology had subjectivity as its main problematic, if we really want to systematically and theoretically elaborate and explicate what we're talking about when we raise these kinds of questions, then I think some patient and mature engagement with phenomenology is a must (btw, the phenomenology of space is a rich area of research for those focused on cities and architecture). It is a bright thread that runs through nearly all postmodern philosophies, not least Derrida (who uses phenomenology and post/structuralism to mutually refocus one another) and most certainly Heidegger and Gadamer, as you mentioned. This is why we need christian philosophers (I hope!) because who else is going to want to deal with these texts?!

Communicating insights gained from philosophy in a non-technical way will be a great service to the postmodern, postevangelical church. The kinds of books that Jamie and David have written I think perform that service admirably in ways that a "primer" cannot because it remains intellectually detached. It's important to get our exegesis of philosophical texts right, but we also need to know what's going on in philosophy (if anything) that has a call on our lives. So good books are only part of the way forward (and will continue to run up against the market's demand to give the religious consumer seven steps for your best postmodern purposive life now). There are encouraging movements afoot, for example, in justice, the arts and finance, which have less to do with reflection upon new philosophical ideas and more to do with orthopraxic death and resurrection.

[Christopher Roussel]

All,
Thaks for the thoughts on Grenz. i think i may fall in between Jamie and Grenz here (but it could be just my naivety!).
Geoff,
To re-phrase my original question (Should theology in (or after) postmodernity try to resolve these issues, or should it try to sidestep them completely? In either case, how do you think it should?)... In other words, should theology attempt to re-appropriate the various philosophical strands that appear (either in actuality or at face value) to be incompatible with "orthodoxy" (whatever we take that to mean)? For instance, Mark Taylor's _Erring: A Postmodern A/Theology_ does a good job explaining that Nietzsche's "death of God" isn't some declaration of atheism. Should theology try to re-appropriate that strand of thought or should theologians side-step the issue altogether?
In yet other words, to what extent should theology navigate through philosophical issues? Should a "good" (or "orthodox") theology include some level of, for instance, epistemological beliefs, or should it be "general" enough to fit in with multiple philosophical systems, past, present, and future?
In yet another way, how much should contemporary theology rely on contemporary philosophy? We can look at, for example, Aquinas and see where his theology relied on the philosophy contemporary to his time. Should theology today be that intertwined with philosophy today so that 400 years from now, they can look back and see how much theology relied on philosophy? To bring this into the discussion on "contextualization," how should theology relate to the current fad/fancy of philosophical interpretation? i think each of those sets ask the same thing, but in different ways. So, take your pick there ;)

[Jason Hesiak]

Thanks Joel for your response. I wasn't expecting Kant as the answer, really. I was, probably naively, a bit surprised. In my mind I associate him with narrowing motion down to that which is measurable, which I then associate with the need to be aware of my many various masks if I go to MEASURE a city (by measure here I mean more than just with a tape measure). But, considering that fact that I don't in the least know all the implications when you use the term phenomenology, I'll shut up now, until I go and read more Kant (among others). Thanks again.

[Brandon]

I know this is REALLY late in coming, but when I read Smith say, "Neither of us are taking about "updating" the faith or making the church "relevant" to contemporary culture, and thus advocating everybody buy a ticket for the postmodern bandwagon."

I can't help but wonder why Christians struggle with this so much. On the one hand I think we should struggle with the culture (especially the sinful aspects of that culture) but I don't know how one will get away from it's influence in totality such that in moments of sobriety one will realize how much the culture is affecting them.
Personally, I think we worry about this to the point in which it becomes another "works righteousness."

Having said that, I recall Smith giving an endorsement of Richard Mouw's "Consulting the Faithful" (of which I can't presently find at the moment and it is probably not a "ringing endorsement"). In there, Mouw talks about Jesus "tailoring his message to the crowds." Now I realize Joel Hunter's response concerning Peter and Paul to Rob and Cynthia's response to Johnny are ONE SET OF QUESTIONS (though Cynthia's response comes the closest to what I'm getting at). However, it doesn't say much about contextualization itself. In other words, (thinking of Cynthia's response)the "new sound" is in part new not only to leave stagnation behind (is it stagnant because it is not fresh and invigorating or because it has moved toward dissonance sounds?) but to be relevant. If the majority of people don't think in certain categories why not cater to them even though there is "error" or "bad interpretation" located in there somewhere i.e. a mixture of good and bad, truth and lies is a part of what we have to offer that we can't get away from anyhow.