Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith

4. Appropriating Postmodernism

Appropriating Postmodernisml z ONCE UPON A TIME, not yesterday, but not so very long ago, I’m told, there was a minister in the Reformed tradition whose sermons all had three points.In itself that is not unusual, butin this case they were the same three points, regardless of the text. Each text was expounded in terms of (1)what it said against the Arminians, (2) what it said against the papists, and zyx (3)what it said againstthe modernists. It would nodoubt be going too far tocall this zealous preacher a postmodernist. But he certainly was persistent in expressing hissuspicions of modernity. Moreover, hesuggeststhatone might have theological reasons for such suspicions and that a Christianthinkermight be sympathetic with postmodernism, which shares those suspicions. But, the objectionimmediately arises, postmodernism is a radically secular movement. If by postmodernism you mean (as in fact I do)suchphilosophers as Derrida, Foucault, and Rorty, along with those aspectsof Nietzsche and Heidegger they have appropriated, it is clear that the ’and’ in ’Christianity and postmodern philosophy’can signify only an either/or withoutcompromise . What has Athens to do with Jerusalem, or, to be a bit more current, what hasParis to do with Grand Rapids (aka the New Jerusalem)?Is not the task of the Christian thinker in the face of such godlessprojects of thought to inoculate the faithful againstthese diseases, first by warningthem of the dangers posed by Nietzsche and his minions, and then by refuting their philosophies, wholesaleif possible, but retail if necessary’? Before suggesting a different response, I note in passing the I The following is a lecture presented on June 26, 1996, at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, in connection with zyxw a Calvin College Faculty Summer Seminar in Christian Scholarship, a program funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The theme of the six-week Seminar was Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought. all too real possibility that such refutationswill consist of arguments designed to persuade those within the circle of faith and will often come down to little more than ”They are different from us.” When apologetics lets this happen,it does notconstitute a serious engagement with one’s opponents and can even be construed, not without reason, as a refusal even to talk with them. ”Appropriating postmodernism” is the name I give to the alternative strategy I wish to propose, one that seeks a middle way between the total rejection of the refusenik and the equally uncritical jumping on the bandwagon of this month’s politically correct fad. One can think of appropriation asa doubly violentact. When, for example,Derridaappropriates Heidegger, he first distinguishes the wheat from the chaff and discards Heidegger’s romantic /mysticaltendencieszyxw as relics of the metaphysics of presence that both seek to overcome. Then he recontextualizes the featuresof Heidegger’s attempt at the overcoming of rnetaphysics to which he is sympathetic, relocating them in his conceptualframeworkratherthan in Heidegger’s. In their new home theyare recognizable, but notalways immediately or easily , for their meaningis no longer quitethe same, and thevocabulary in which they are expressed is often quite different. Without forgetting thedual negativity of rejection and recontextualization , it is possible to think of such an appropriation as an invitation to conversation. The appropriator, after listening carefully to the appropriatee, responds by saying, ”I find these aspects of your presentation quite compellingand illuminating. But for me they work better when recontextualized as follows. Of course, that changes the project somewhat and involves the abandonment of this or that aspect of your original proposal. But don’t you agree that those ideasof yours I find compelling work better in the context I propose, or at least, since they can be fruitfully put to workthere, that theyare notinherently wedded to the larger goalsof your project?” Whether one thinks of appropriation as violence or invitation to conversation, zyxwv 1suggest that althoughit does not involve discovering anycounterexamples, it is a form of philosophical counterargument. In another context, thiswasthestrategy I APPRCN’RTATING I’OSTMODEKNISM zyxw 77 adopted in response to thereligion critiques of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. In a book called zyxw Stlspiciorz zyxw nrtd FnifJz, I argued that their accounts of the ways in which irreligious interests shape religious ideasand especially the uses to which theyare put by the believing individual and community are genuine insights and that the zyxwv task of the Christian thinker is not to refute them buttoacknowledgetheir force. But I also argued that Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud...