What will the Church look like in twenty-five years? It is impossible to know. I expect the lines between traditions and institutions will continue to blur. All we can do is look at the trajectories of change. Here are four transitions I see as we move into a Postmodern era.
1. From autonomous objective intellect to socially constructed people in community. – "I think. Therefore I am." These have been the watchwords of the Enlightenment and Modernist eras. It is a belief that an Individual can somehow stand outside and beyond their culture and ascertain universal truth. The postmodern perspective is that human beings individually participate in constructing social reality, which in turn shapes individuals. It is a dynamic, seamless ceaseless process. Our language and culture lead us to select certain information from our experiences and ignore other information. Thus, any human knowledge is constrained by the culture. Even revealed absolute or universal truth must still be communicated into limited cultural community contexts.
2. From Foundationalism to narrative. – The Church has largely been divided over two foundational projects over the Modernist era. The liberal project has scientifically dissected Christianity using "autonomous objective intellect" through higher critical methods to distill a common (foundational) nature to human religious experience. The conservative project has taken Scripture as the revealed Word of God and approached it as "autonomous objective intellects" using rationalist tools to construct systematic error-proof theologies based on foundational principles.
Postmoderns are both post-liberal and post-conservative in the sense I have just described. They focus on the narrative of the Word of God. They believe God transforms people and cultures by revealing a narrative and inviting people into it. This is not to say that we should not seek out commonalities in religious experience and study the Bible from every angle. However, it must be done with respect for the authority of the Bible as God's revealed narrative. (From "higher criticism" to "lower criticism;" from under the Bible, not above it.) It is also not to say that a systematic study of Biblical propositions is unimportant so long as it recognizes that such a construction is always culturally bound and incomplete. It is the narrative and how the narrative interfaces with our cultural narrative that is important.
If you are unfamiliar with the postmodern scene, I know what you are asking. "What do I mean by narrative?" I like to think of it this way. If you and I were getting acquainted and I asked you to tell me who you are, would you give me a second-by-second recounting of your existence? No. We only remember a small portion of the events in our lives. (And for some of us, the portion is getting smaller all the time.) We tend to remember milestones, moments of great joy, moments of great sorrow, and moments of symbolic significance. When discussing those events, we weave a narrative about who we are.
Let's say after hearing your narrative, I wrote it all down. What would you think if I then went to your family, friends, and acquaintances to see if I could ascertain a common shared experience of your character and the nature of our relationships with you? What if we decided to determine who you are based on our collective experiences, using your narrative only as a loose guide? (Liberal Christianity)
Or what if I analyzed your narrative with great scrutiny to ascertain a precise set of principles and propositions to describe your character and then adamantly insisted that anyone who had encountered you in a way contrary to my systematic construction of your nature was wrong. In fact, I would not accept that they have actually met you unless they would subscribe to my construction? (Conservative Christianity) I doubt you would be too pleased with me.
Your purpose in telling me your narrative was to initiate a relationship, not to become the subject of an analytic science project conducted by an objective observer. The Bible is God's narrative about God's "life" and God's invitation to join in that narrative. We come to know God primarily by entering into a relationship with God's triune reality and with the community of people he has called together, not through distant objective analytic observation.
3. From mechanical to organic. – One of the great triumphs of European culture over the past several hundred years has been its ability to dissect, categorize and quantify reality. It paved the way for constructing complex tools (machines) and human systems (corporations). The metaphor for describing human function became the machine. Our language is full of mechanical metaphors. "I think he has a screw loose." "We're hitting on all cylinders." "We had a communications breakdown."
It was once believed that science would someday unlock all mysteries. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow once wrote that at the end of the twentieth century, it is as if scientists have been climbing a mountain. After years and years of climbing, they place their fingers on the top edge of the mountain and pull themselves over the top, only to be greeted by the philosophers and theologians. The more we know, the more complex and mysterious reality gets.
Postmodern folks embrace mystery and complexity. They don't see a human machine in motion but rather a dynamic and organic human community. Just as the body is a complex system of polarities endlessly readjusting to keep balance (ex., breathing, blood circulation, blood sugar levels, etc.), so is any human community or organization. Centralized management of discreet functions was a productive improvement over uncoordinated human activity before the Industrial Revolution, but exponentially improved production soon produced a world so complex that such structures could no longer work effectively. More organic models that function like a body are needed, and that is the transition we are in today. Unfortunately, the Church seems especially stuck in Modernist mechanical models. It is for that reason that many people have ventured outside the institutional structures of the Church to discover more organic ways of being the Church.
4. From hubris to humility. – The Modernist era was dominated by almost blind faith in human progress through reason. A magazine was begun in 1900 called "Christian Century" because this was the Century in which the Church, through reason and technology, would usher in the Kingdom of God. In hindsight, that was pure hubris. Over the century, much of the Church became disillusioned with that notion. Postmodern folks believe every innovation may bring advantages but always has unintended consequences. This links back to the idea of life as a complex organic entity that makes accurate assessments of outcomes challenging. More caution is often warranted, particularly when human systems are involved.
The blind faith in scientific rationalism has often marginalized minority voices in its headlong pursuit of progress. Postmodern folks are less trusting of scientific rationalism as the final authority. Other voices, including minority voices, may have things to teach us that will empower us to progress as a diverse community together rather than being dominated by imperialistic "progress."
Final Thoughts
If you want to know more about what drives much of the Emergent church at an intellectual and theological level, it might surprise you that at least one scholar postulates a strong Presbyterian connection in all this. While at a conference in April, Dr. John Franke made the case that Karl Barth is the theological link between Modern and Postmodern theology.
The Theologians who seem to have had the broadest impact are people like Lesslie Newbigin and N. T. Wright. Dallas Willard is another thinker who appears to have a wide following. Mars Hill Graduate School and Regent College have been pursuing the Emergent conversation from an academic standpoint. Many of their faculty have written books and articles on postmodern issues, not the least of which was Stanley Grenz, one of my favorite theologians. I have read both of John Franke's books. I found them very helpful and excellent primers on postmodern theology. The first, co-authored with Grenz, was Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context. The other is The Character of Theology: An Introduction to its Nature Task and Purpose. A website that has an ongoing discussion by Emergent academics is ThinkTank.
Finally, as a Presbyterian, I believe every postmodern Christian should become acquainted with Kenneth E. Bailey. I recently finished Jacob & the Prodigal: How Jesus Retold the Story of Israel. Amazing! Bailey's understanding of Middle-Eastern culture and history, and how he brings this knowledge to bear on Scripture, is truly powerful. He has changed how I understand the Bible. I intend to do an extended presentation of some of his work on my blog a little later.
Sorry for the length of this post, but thanks for sharing your precious time with me.
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