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Preface
- Fordham University Press
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xvii Postmodern Apologetics? Both of these words tend to be loaded and, at times, hotly contested. Both have negative connotations, at least in some circles. And, in fact, they seem diametrically opposed to each other. Is not apologetics a militant defense of traditional Christianity, associated with forced baptisms, mass conversions, and screaming demagogues? And is not postmodernism an equally militant rejection of any such belief, in favor of other beliefs or no particular beliefs at all, either complete and utter relativism that rejects all values and virtues or a meaningless term thought up by some doomsayers who thought the modern age was over when, really , we are still in the middle of it? If “apologetics” stands for blind and dogmatic faith and “postmodern” for the complete rejection and even suppression of faith, how could the two possibly meet? Yet obviously, both descriptions are caricatures. The introduction explores the history of apologetics in more detail, so let me define it simply in terms of the subtitle: “Apologetics” is used here to characterize the ways in which contemporary philosophy articulates the coherence and value of religious experience and belief in God. Quite a few contemporary thinkers have begun anew to examine the question of whether it is possible to have an experience of the divine and what such an experience might look like. And my central argument is that they do indeed engage in arguments for the validity, coherence, and meaningfulness of such thinking about religious experience. Thus, they are, at least in some minimalist sense, apologetic projects: projects in defense of God or Preface Christian faith. (A couple among them do actually go further and occasionally make statements about Christianity having the best or even only account of an experience of the divine. That would be a much stronger, and probably more problematic, apologetic claim.) Yet, in all cases, these “apologetic projects,” if they may be called such, are qualified by the term “postmodern.” The meaning of that term will also emerge more fully in the course of the discussion, but I take it loosely to refer to what comes after the modern and is sufficiently different from or even opposed to it, to require a separate term. More specifically, I use it roughly synonymous with what has come to be called “continental” philosophy (as opposed to “analytical” philosophy), usually including twentieth- and twenty-first-century French and German thinkers, often occupied with such philosophical occupations as existentialism, phenomenology , hermeneutics, and deconstruction (although there are others). The thinkers treated here are primarily French, or deeply influenced by French thinkers, and are all phenomenological and, to some extent, hermeneutic thinkers. Perhaps a more correct (and less contentious but also less interesting) title would have been “Phenomenological Apologetics” rather than “Postmodern Apologetics.” This book, then, has essentially two purposes: On the one hand, it is an introduction to major thinkers in what is beginning to be called the field of “Continental Philosophy of Religion,” written for students and any other interested “lay person.” Thus, I aim above all to present the arguments here as clearly and non-technically as possible, which is also why I have tried to keep the notes and extensive engagement with secondary sources to a minimum. A section with suggestions for “further reading” is provided at the end of the book. On the other hand, the book also sustains an argument that the philosophies treated in Part I prepare and those in Part II sustain an apologetic argument for Christianity. Part III deals with the most recent American appropriations of and responses to the French thinkers treated in Part II. To set the scene, the introduction provides a brief and rather sweeping survey of what an apologetic endeavor used to look like and shows how such arguments grew to be generally considered unsuccessful and even invalid. In Europe, by the early (and certainly the middle) of the twentieth century, religion seemed to be at the very least outmoded, if not actually dead. Most philosophers were no longer interested in religious questions and, for much of the twentieth century, religion was largely a philosophical taboo. This has dramatically changed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century and now quite a few, primarily French, philosophers are again talking about God and religion. The introduction lays xviii ■ Preface [18.233.223.189] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:40 GMT) out this history of apologetics and the demise of the project of “natural theology...